Nat’s good humor died.

January wore jeans and boots and one of his extra work hats he kept on a peg in his stable office. Infinitely flawless.

“Jesus, Willie.”

“Don’t get mad at him,” said January. “Mona’s idea.”

“We need the help,” added Willie. “Even if it’s to flank. She can ride.”

“She knows nothing about herding. What if one of them balks?”

“She’s right here.” January approached, her walk more assured than he remembered. “I’d appreciate it if you didn’t talk around me.”

“Fine. You can’t go,” Nat said, pointed, direct. The kickback of authority in his voice bolstered his dogged determination to not get distracted by her ass bouncing against the saddle all day.

The ranch’s second-eldest hand, Mack, poked his head around the corner. “Clay’s wife went into labor twenty minutes ago, boss.”

Nat felt the wind knocked out of him. He yanked his hat low, so low that the silk band cinched his eyelids closed, a blessed counter-pinch to the headache forming behind his brow. “Perfect.”

January’s sultry-low voice filled the stalls. “Looks like you don’t have much choice, Hugo.”

His cheeks flamed. He hated the nickname Hugo, given to him by his English teacher after he witnessed Nat running down Main Street in nothing but a gray shawl early one Sunday morning when Wes stole his clothes after a night of drinking. Though Victor Hugo had, according to legend, managed to write a masterpiece while wearing nothing but a shawl, Nat only managed to flash the Baptist choir filing in for Sunday services.

He repositioned his hat, approached her like he was considering a duel but she had all the pistols, and stared the sass right back out of her.

She pressed her lips together, effectively erasing her grin.

Her face was different. Contour replaced fleshy, youthful cheeks. Shadows dusted the delicate skin beneath her green eyes. Lips he once had to coax into ripe, plump shades of fruit now came naturally full. Sun-kissed waves tumbled down to rest on her shoulders. She was sexy, seasoned with time. And the reason he nearly lost his mind a decade ago. He would let that happen again when his cold, dead corpse was pushing bluebonnets up through the dirt.

“No noise. No yelling unless you’re in trouble. Calm and steady movement to minimize stress on the herd. Mack’s the lead, I control the direction. Hang back. Do what you’re told. I won’t have my men getting hurt.”

She blinked too much, at an apparent loss for words. Something else different. Maybe in the ten years since she disappeared without a proper goodbye, she had learned that empty last words held little power. Her gaze drizzled below his chin. She nodded.

He felt like a USDA, prime-cut asshole.

Nat took Poe’s reins, led the horse out like the barn was on fire, and rode until he was satisfied January would hightail it back to Mona’s trailer and consult her prized map for another place to spread her heartache. But at the target pasture, he found her among those assembled. Atop his steadfast mare, Brontë, her chin tipped defiantly, spine erect, hat brim obscuring her eyes, she was beautiful.

And he was sixteen ways of gone.

* * *

Goats, January had discovered, are like best girlfriends. Brush the hair, have a good heart-to-heart about the shortcomings of males—any species, really—belt out a favorite tune alongside them, deliver on great food and drink, and there wasn’t anything they wouldn’t do for you. January knew this because of a two-week jag to New Zealand. After many days of failed whistles and yelling and skipping-by-example like a madwoman down the Waikato hillside, she had collapsed in a valley, belted out a few lines of David Bowie’s Always Crashing in the Same Car, and one particularly sassy goat named Dolly nudged her elbow and started to follow her everywhere. Others soon followed.

Cattle?

More like that arrogant jerk you once dated: prefers firm strokes, dislikes the sound of your I’m-serious voice, shies away from a pointed stare, and has the potential to kick when you’re unaware. January’s backside alternated between numbness and pain, and she wanted nothing more than to climb down from Brontë, drag herself to the hump trailer, and take a pre-shower to her shower. But there was something about a particular cow and calf that had her thinking all day, well past the time they had moved and sorted a hundred head, well past a long day’s work when she did more watching than doing—something she hated. Nat said to forget them—the cow and calf they had tried to keep with the herd for an hour—but January couldn’t forget them. What if the calf was injured and the surly mom was showing protective instincts? What if a coyote came in the night? On the New Zealand hillside, her job had been to count then sleep at the pen’s opening—no animals in, no animals out. No animals left behind.

The memory came on like a nightmare: entrails, blood, black and white and gray hair. An unfortunate lesson in adulting, nothing more. Most likely, the predator struck so fast, Dolly was gone before she awoke.

January’s throat squeezed closed. She wanted to go back.

“No,” said Nat. “We’ll try again at first light.”

Nat had already dismounted Poe and was in the throes of a surprisingly intimate exchange between rider and horse that involved strokes, scratches and lip puckering. Horse, too. An odd sensation squirmed deep in January’s belly. For most of the day, she had convinced herself that Nat had turned into a bitter, small-minded person incapable of seeing anything but the bottom dollar on his ranch. His all-business demeanor, his absence of humor, and his steadfast determination to hold on to anger where she was concerned pointed to a completely different person than the easy-going boy she had loved at eighteen. She had hurt him. She owned that. But it wasn’t as if he hadn’t been warned. On a hundred different days in a hundred different ways, she had made it clear this town would not hold her.

“I won’t sleep tonight.” January shifted Brontë’s reins toward the north pasture and gave her a nudge.

Nat called after her a few times by his old nickname for her—J—then let loose a few choice cowboy words before she heard Poe eating huge stretches of pasture with his strides to catch up.

She braced for a tirade that didn’t come. What the sun hadn’t leeched out of Nat’s new cactus personality, aching muscles had finished off. At a greater-than-usual distance apart, they rode in silence, nothing between them but the cadence of Poe and Brontë leaving their mark on the world. Turns out, first light wasn’t needed. The harvest moon lit the open spaces and branches like a lantern always hanging from the next tree.

They spotted the bovine pair near a mesquite tree whose lowest branch stretched wide like a park bench. Nat tucked Poe beside Brontë.

“True north,” whispered January.

“What?”

“The internal compass in all animals. Take away factors like weather and social herd impulses, animals align themselves north and south. Humans, too, if we weren’t restricted by bed placement.”

“You learn that from some meditation guru in Tibet?” His tone was flippant, judgmental, as if to say that someone on the other side of the world couldn’t possibly understand his slice.

“No. Your grandfather.”

Nat tucked his chin. His hat brim eclipsed his moonlit jawline.

“On that Meier trail ride when we were fourteen. I asked him how the cattle decided where to stand. He said some decisions are just inevitable, beyond control.”

“Beyond impulses?”

Hairs along her neck and arms prickled. “Why don’t you tell me what you need to say now, what you’ve been holding on to for ten years?”

“Don’t flatter yourself, J. While you were off building mud huts in Africa, life here moved on without you. People married, had babies, lost everything in hard years, and leaned on their neighbors until they found a new definition of everything. People lived and people…”

“Died. I know, Nat. Did you get my letter?”

He nodded.

“Did you read it?”

“Made for good kindling.”

She supposed she couldn’t blame him. Her leaving had still been raw—ten months or so—when they found Clem Meier lying in a pasture, exactly how everyone knew he would have wanted to go, part of his land, according to her mother. January hadn’t been building mud huts in Africa when she found out. She had been in a bus terminal in Copenhagen. Alone. She hung up the pay phone, slid down the wall, and emptied herself of tears. Clem had been the closest thing she had to a grandfather. And, at that moment, leaving Close Call felt like the closest thing to a mistake. She didn’t learn Nat’s father, Robert, died of a heart attack one week to the day past Clem until she disembarked from a boat in the Philippines three months later. Dockside in Cebu, she penned an apology letter. For Clem, for the burden of the ranch that shifted to a very young Nat who had to leave college, for doing what she had to do to stay sane.

“There wasn’t one day away that I didn’t think about this place. When travel isn’t exciting, it’s lonely. Always saying goodbye.”

“Why didn’t you come back?”

“I hadn’t found what I was looking for yet.”

Nat had perfected the hardened squint, even in moonlight. He stared at something, at nothing, in the distance. His defined jaw shifted slightly as if he were steeling himself for a right hook. “And now?”

January operated in two modes: avoidance and honesty. Even when each hurt like hell. She delivered the punch in a full-on confession. “Maybe it doesn’t exist, but I have to keep trying.”

She dismounted Brontë and handed Nat the reins.

“What are you doing? Meier cattle are used to men on horses, not on foot.”

“That might be the problem.” With calm, deliberate strides, she sliced the distance to the cow in half.

“J, stop.” His voice was part ranch boss, part warning hiss.

But January was all focus. She approached the animal without making eye contact, because what female wants the stare-down when she just wants to be herself?

The cow licked her nose and looked at January askance. Sure, it was because the animal had eyes on the side of her head, but January detected brains and attitude in abundance. This cow wanted no part of the herd mentality. January could relate.

Nat peppered instructions to her: they can kick to the side, too and move in an arc, not a circle and something about a point of balance—all of which she tried to block out in favor of getting to know this animal.

She had soft, brown eyes that blinked in sleepy intervals. She raised her head, but her ears stayed forward and her jaw circled in a chewing motion. Her attention never strayed far from her calf a short distance away.

January altered her proximity then varied quiet moments with soft, one-sided conversation, mostly confessions she hadn’t told anyone—that the open ocean terrified her, that she wasn’t certain there was a God, that she feared she was becoming her father, a person who never once thought of others before his agenda. January called the cow beautiful and named her MooDonna because she had light hair that glowed in the moonlight. By the time January had drawn close enough to give the cow firm strokes beneath her chin and confided in her that the sight of Nat in his frayed jeans and dusty boots made January question her entire life’s plan, they had become fast friends.

“I need you and your boy to come back with us,” said January softly. “For Dolly. Okay?”

MooDonna licked her wet nose again.

January took that as a good sign. She retreated with a confident gait, careful not to turn her back completely on the thousand-pound female. At Brontë, January climbed and settled into the saddle, all without a word from the slack-mouthed cowboy next to her.

The cow and her calf followed.

January glanced away and smiled into the night. She felt like she had summitted Everest. Gone was the unseasoned girl of ten years ago. She was wiser, more skilled at handling challenges and learning from her mistakes, able to atone for her wrongs, even if it was only to convince a cow to get to the safety of the herd.

Nat rode up beside her. “How did you—”

“She needed a little female understanding.”

He gave a snort of laughter that clearly said bullshit. “Yeah, well don’t get too attached. She’ll be gone soon.”

Words as densely packed and double-loaded as a shotgun shell.

“Got a tough one for you, Mona.”

Mona peeked out beside the Dodge truck’s exposed engine, squinted into the magnum light-bug zapper contraption hanging from a hook inside the diesel’s open hood, and said, “Lay it on me.”

Post-supper behind the barn was advice time.

“Man slept with his mother-in-law while his wife was away on business. Wife’s boss spotted them having sex in a car behind the office and is jealous because she wanted to sleep with him, so she told the wife. Wife had an indiscretion of her own with the man’s brother.”

“For real?” said Mona. “Add a fancy pool and a couple of sparkly ball gowns and you’d be inside a rerun of Dallas.”

A bubble of amusement originated in Nat’s gut and took its sweet-ass time heading north for release. Laughter felt great after the brutal day. He had started writing the anonymous advice column in college as a favor to a friend, then for some side cash, then out of habit. Now, he continued it mostly as a security blanket—but for the grace of God, he could be as fucked up as most of the people who asked him for guidance. And he got off on it—a strange fucking high—to know people read his words, even if it was just to tell someone to get off a high horse and forgive. The payoff was damned near immediate—sometimes as soon as he got to the feed store, before dawn, people would be debating, engaging, admiring or disagreeing, newspaper ink still wet. But the sensation was hollow, short-lived, nothing close to writing something that would last more than a day, that might change someone’s outlook on life or give a reader refuge during a storm in life, that rewarded him with that sense of ultimate freedom time and time again. Years back, he tried to hand the column over to Mona—she helped him with the trickiest advice, anyway—but she refused. Said she couldn’t rub two sentences together and make it make sense—her words.

“Any kids?” Mona asked.

“None mentioned.”

“What was the question?”

“Guy wants to know if the infidelity cancels out, puts him back on even ground with his wife.”

“What…would…you…say?” Tightening something under the truck’s hood punctuated Mona’s question with grunts.

Nat learned long ago that to offer muscle was a serious affront to Mona’s independent streak. Brutal, that streak in the Rose women.

“I guess I’d say fidelity isn’t a scorecard,” said Nat. “Doesn’t matter who cheated first, both people put the outside world ahead of their relationship. No coming back from that.”

“And if they still love each other?”

“Some choices you can’t come back from, Mona.” Nat’s voice wavered like a calf that had slipped free of a rope. He leaned his backside against the truck’s quarter panel, grateful for relief from the bright light, grateful he could hide in the darkness. “Hurts too much.”

Mona returned her wrench to the toolbox and wiped her hands on a grease cloth she snagged from her pocket. “Are we still talking fancy pools and ball gowns?”

As if she had to ask. He bunched his hands inside his jean pockets to keep him from tearing his hair out.

Mona leaned against the wheel well beside him. “Do you know the real reason I saved up for that telescope?”

Nat shook his head.

“I look through that lens and know nothing about what I see. Everything looks pretty much the same except the moon. On clear nights, I’ll drive to kingdom come to get a clear line of sight on that celestial body. Makes me feel close to her—even if I know it’s daylight on her side of the world, it’s still there, watching over her. Raising a strong, independent child ain’t easy. Raising her to remember all the parts of her that ain’t so strong and independent is even harder. She rarely calls or writes, but I know she looks at the same moon each night, and that’s enough for me. Love always brings people back.”

“I’m glad you had the chance to see her again.”

“For someone who gives damned fine advice, you sure are thick. J-Rose didn’t come home for me, son. She’s looking for something that’s got nothing to do with that money her grandmother left her.”

True north, January had said in the darkened pasture, in that distant voice that had crept in more and more in the days before she left. Those moments reminded him of one of those old-fashioned, slow songs of longing his grandfather listened to after he lost his wife of fifty-two years, the ones with a ton of wiggle room between the notes to lose your shit completely.

Nat wasn’t anyone’s true north—not now that the ranch was hanging on by its fingernails and certainly not for January Rose. That weathervane snapped long ago. As far as he was concerned, aligning himself to the prevailing winds of the Meier legacy was all he needed.

Fidelity wasn’t a scorecard, but leaving certainly was. And right now, the score was January-1, Nat-0.

Nat’s favorite time in the barn was before bedtime. The chaos of the day was gone, replaced by a subtle burr of contentment from the animals. Most chores were complete, which took the edge off his stomach, which seemed to exist in a perpetual state of stress—especially near auction time. His grandfather had taught him that late night was about the little details: throwing hay as a bedtime snack so your animals look to you for leadership and loyalty; topping off water to ensure hydration in the Texas heat, though by October, the nights felt less like a goat’s butt in a pepper patch—Clem’s words; and, most importantly, reflecting on the day from a place of gratefulness. Wes was alive; Chance wasn’t in trouble—for once; their mother emailed daily photos of herself smiling in front of tourist places in Paris; and Nat had done everything in his power to save the ranch for one more day.

And for Nat, late night was the time for the only selfish thing he allowed himself—finding time to write.

Not fancy pools or sparkling ball gowns or the emotional messes people got themselves into when they’d as soon bang a hole in a tree as make good choices. He clicked the send button in his email program—his daily column to the Close Caller senior editor (not surprisingly in small-town America, also his Kindergarten teacher)—and pulled up the draft of his novel.

He busied himself with clearing some space on the desk, in his head. The cursor winked back at him at even, one-second intervals like a resting heartbeat. Poe stirred in his stall—always a restless sleeper. A yawn slipped loose. He hadn’t checked market reports yet. Jesus, he had a window of about thirty minutes before he fell into a sitting coma then had to be awake in four hours.

Focus, Nat.

He was close enough to typing “The End” that he could taste no small victory, but the climax scene when the main character returned home lacked perspective and a compelling narrative drive. Five unpublished novels into the series, Nat still couldn’t put his finger on what was missing in his writing. His skills were decent enough—feedback from the column readers and the fact that other towns in the South saw fit to run his words in their hometown papers attested to that. Then there was the A.I. Briggs award for best unpublished manuscript that he snagged one month before he left college. He wanted nothing more than to fuse the dying Western genre to the last frontiers of ocean trenches and artificial intelligence, to capture the amazing spirit of his grandfather on the page, to remind people that reading was a soul-nurturing pastime, to prove that writing wasn’t a waste of time, as his father believed.

Can’t support a family on dreams, son.

When Wes returned from Middle East deployment, when Chance finally grew some responsibility, when their mother finally found the self she claimed the ranch and their father had denied her all those years…then Nat could breathe enough to carve out a path to publication. For now, he stole moments of freedom like bubble gum from the corner gas station, telling no one, denying how late nights in his stable office went down. Ranch hands had a ten-to-one bet that porn had something to do with his closed door at midnight. Most nights, Nat was simply hearing the poetic storytelling of his grandfather’s World War II letters home in his mind and trying to capture a sliver of that frontier, cowboy magic.

He scrolled back and reread the paragraph in which the love interest walked onto the page. God almighty, but she had been January all along. As close as he was to the material, he hadn’t seen it until now. Truth be told, she was the love interest in the other four books, too—different hairstyles, different locales, but always that same ignition switch in his chest. And, as in real life, the love interest left.

Nat snapped his laptop closed. He glanced around his office with new eyes, with old eyes. And when his tired mind had mentally written the scene of January Rose coming to his door at midnight, straddling him in his chair and losing the ten-to-one bet for half his staff, he snapped on the old transistor radio and listened to the market report until carcass values slaughtered every urge to tear a streak to the hump trailer, drive her to a place where only the stars stood witness, and show her what he had really been holding onto for the past ten years.

Hope.