{Cary}

Cary finished clearing the garden in a fury of activity, chopping out the last tough roots and hurling them so that they rattled the chain-link fence. He was sweating and parched when it was done, but not nearly tired enough. He slung the pair of shovels over his shoulder and trudged to the barns.

He found Tru squatting in a stall, her cheek leaned against the glossy brown side of a cow with dainty hooves. The metal pail at her feet rang with streams of milk hitting the bottom. Her eyes were closed, and Cary stood a moment watching her, catching his breath.

"Aunt Tru," he said.

Her eyes opened and narrowed at him, but the rhythmic splash of milk didn't falter. "Sweetheart," she greeted him gruffly.

"Garden's done." He swung the shovels off his shoulder. "Got something more for me to do today?"

She shut her eyes again, and the barn was quiet except for long streams of milk and the stamp of a hoof. The cow turned her broad head to gaze at him with wide, long-lashed brown eyes, her mouth chewing thoughtfully.

"Think I'll get you to feed the calf," Tru said. "Might as well start learning the livestock now you're here."

Cary brushed dirt off his gloves, then took them off and stuck them in his pocket. That job didn't sound as hard as he would have liked. He rubbed the back of his neck, trying not to think about how close to the city Jon and Pete were right now.

Tru hung her stool on a peg on the other side of the pen and lifted the bucket of frothy yellow-white milk smoothly from under the cow. She unlatched the gate with one hand like she'd done it a thousand times. "Your friend gone?"

"Yuh," Cary said shortly. He pulled a utility blade out of his pocket and silently held it out to her. Jon had left it lying on the pillow in his room.

Her eyebrows twitched and she put it into one of her many pockets. "Wondered where that had got to."

He was grateful when she didn't ask anything more.

The bottle for the calf seemed enormous compared to the bottles he used to make for Liam: it was as long and wide as his forearm. Tru snapped on an equally huge rubber nipple and shook the milk inside. The calf was in a separate pen lined with straw, all knobby knees and furry attentive ears. It spread its hooves and bawled loud and long when it saw Tru coming, then kicked up its heels in the straw.

Tru handed Cary the bottle and fiddled with the latch on the gate. The bottle was hotter than he'd expected, straight out of the warm udder of the mother cow.

"Come on in here and crowd him in the corner," Tru said. "He gets too excited and pulls away otherwise. Young and dumb."

Hesitantly, Cary edged into the pen. It wasn't very big with Tru and him and a calf energetically bumping the leg of Tru's coveralls. As soon as he held the bottle down, the calf turned its attention to him, shoving its wet nose in his palm and tugging on his fingers with its sandpaper tongue.

He laughed, surprising himself. He did as Tru showed him, and the calf latched onto the bottle, leaning on Cary's legs, milk dribbling down its whiskery chin.

"You're a natural," Tru said.

"Does it have a name?" Cary asked.

"Big Mac," she said wryly. "We'll feed him up and sell him for beef. I'm hoping we get a little heifer next year. Milk's of more use to me." She watched the calf happily switching its tail for a moment. "Don't usually keep boys around here for the trouble they make." She squinted at him. "Guess I'll make an exception for you."

He laughed drily again, ducking his head.

"He likes a scratch here." Tru rubbed her blunt fingers around the point of the calf's skull where a horn nub might grow. There was a whorl of hair on the flat bridge of its nose—a cowlick, Cary thought. His face had relaxed almost into a smile by the time the bottle was sucked dry.

They fed chickens, two goats, a pony with a bang of coarse hair hanging over its eyes, and a flock of sheep that bounced off each other's fluffy sides as they jostled for space at the trough. Tru checked the sky as she closed the last gate. "Took half the time it usually takes. I must be getting old." As they headed up to the house to wash up, she whistled tunelessly through her teeth, and Cary realized she was happy. Her mood lightened his, and he didn't think of anything beyond the pleasure of showering clean and filling his stomach with beans and fried tomatoes and onions.

There was a text from Kadee on his phone when supper was done and he stretched out on his bed and thumbed her number to call her back.

Her voice was bright and made his lips pull up in a smile. "Cary, how are you?"

"I'm all right." If he stayed just in this moment, it was pretty close to the truth. "Fed my first calf today. You should've seen the size of the bottle."

She laughed and his body tightened, prickling. He couldn't think about how far away everyone he cared about was, or how many days it would be until he saw them again. "How're you?" He laid his hand over his eyes to picture her better.

She sighed. "Oh god—it's been a week. At least it's over now." He heard her take a soft breath. "Um...I don't have anything up this weekend...do you think I could come up and see you?"

He held still, trying to find a reason he should say no. "It's a long drive, Kadee," he said slowly. "And a pretty boring way to spend your weekend."

"I do not call feeding baby calves with my—with you—a boring weekend." He could almost hear her eye roll.

Suddenly he wanted this a lot. He sat up, looking around the room like he could figure out where to put her. "I'll ask Tru," he said. He put his hand against his stomach, trying to catch his breath. "You want to—stay the night? I mean—there's a bed and a door and I'll—sleep on the couch. In the living room." Jesus-God, help. He sounded like an idiot.

Her laugh made him feel like he'd turned a somersault. "I'd like that. Oh, I almost forgot—did Pete tell you?" He was glad she didn't wait for an answer. "Klassens dropped the charges. Someone took a video on their phone of the whole thing."

He hadn't realized he'd been worried about that until the pressure lifted off his stomach and he could breathe easily again. Thank you Jesus-God. "Guess you don't have to worry about visiting me in jail anymore."

"God, don't even joke about that. I would obviously have to break up with you if you went to jail."

He laughed soundlessly.

"Text me when you know if I can come, okay?"

"Yuh. I'll ask right now."

But the silence hung between them—he didn't want to say the word goodbye.

"I'll just be waiting by the phone as usual," Kadee said lightly, and hung up.

Tru was on the porch in the wide wicker chair. She had a stubby wooden pipe between her teeth, her eyes narrowed on the setting sun while her fingers swiftly braided a length of rope out of twine.

Cary settled on the top of the steps, putting a boot against the post, glancing at her and then at the red beams of light slanting through the columns of fir trees. "My—girlfriend wants to come." He figured Tru would be more open to a visitor if it was a girl. He shot her a look and caught her doing the same to him. "Just for a night. She can have my—the guest room." He tried to think of the most out of the way place to put himself. "I'll sleep in my car."

She made a noise with her teeth. "The hayloft's more comfortable." She squinted at him and he realized it was a joke. "This someone important to you?" she asked.

"Yeah." He rubbed the side of his face uncertainly. This felt a lot like what she'd feared—people disturbing her peace because of him. He tried to think of how to explain it to her. "I had to take what family I could find. When mine didn't want me. My friends and the people I was staying with were that. For me." He breathed out slow, feeling fingers dug into the side of his neck, and Pete's words hot against his ear. He shrugged a shoulder up to rub the feeling away.

"I want to keep the ones I can," he said in a low voice. "I wasn't too good on my own."

"She can come," Tru said reflectively. "Bed's big enough for two."

Cary went still, his hand spread against his front. He had expected Tru to make some kind of boundary for this visit. He wanted Kadee to come, a lot, but the thought of taking his shirt off with her again made him feel fragile as eggshells. It should have occurred to him this was probably why she was coming. He pushed his back into the post and closed his eyes a moment. He told himself it didn't matter what that felt like in his body. She mattered too much to lose because he was still broken.

Tru glanced at him. "You taking the day off then?"

"Can I?" His voice was rough, asking for something he wanted.

She nodded once. "You earned it."

He made a dry noise. "She wants to try feeding the calf."

"Huh." Tru's fingers swiftly completed the braid and tied a firm knot. "There's probably a litter of kittens in the hayloft too, if you can find 'em." She got to her feet. "I'll kill us a chicken for dinner," she said, and that was that.

Cary sent the texts, feeling like his body was filled with helium:

<you're good to come>

<wear baggy ugly clothes>

<no heels>

Kadee's text flashed back immediately: <anything you want from the city?>

He thought there should be something he was missing by now—but nothing occurred to him.

<just you>

As he closed his phone he noticed a pair of texts from "PETE." He swallowed, hovering his thumb over them, then tapped then open.

<Cary I love you. I'm so sorry I scared you. I wish I could take that back there's no excuse I can make to you. I'm ready to listen when you're ready to talk>

Cary blinked. His eyes felt like they were full of sand, and he knuckled one as he scrolled up to the next text.

<Please call. Please come home>

He frowned at the lines like they were a puzzle. Pete's last words in person, hot on his ear, were far more believable. We are not talking about this anymore. These messages were from some other reality, like the fantasy his mother lived in. Imagine a grown-up ever saying sorry to him.

He deleted the thread.

*Thanks for the reads and votes, lovelies! I definitely put a little bit of the dairy farm I work at into this scene lol. I hope you're enjoying where the story is going...*