“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?”