“I Told Her to Go Dance With Another Man — Her Comeback Left Me Standing There Like an Idiot”

“Uh-huh. Fences, water pumps, that truck, the garden, the chicken. Very neighborly.”

I didn’t answer. Because she was right, and the reasons were getting embarrassingly thin.

The night that changed everything, we were fixing her water trough — float valve stuck, mud everywhere, the whole nine. We finished as the sky went that gold color right before dark and just… sat. Two overturned crates, horses shifting in their stalls, cicadas starting up.

“You ever feel like the farm gets too quiet?” she asked.

I almost lied. Said the truth instead. “Sometimes, yeah.”