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He grinned. Easy. Automatic.

There it was. The thing I could usually count on.

I took the gate from him.

“You working this evening?” he asked.

“Not tonight. Finish your hay shift.”

“I could come over after.”

“I’ve got enough hands.”

I had my own two and neither one knew what to do with itself, but there wasn’t any sense taking his evening too.

He headed toward the barn. I watched him go, then looked across the yard.

Josie laughed somewhere behind the lower pens.

I knew her laugh now. Knew the difference between the small one she gave people and the loose one Boone got when he forgot he was funny.

I carried the wrench toward the barn and found them by the calf enclosure.

Boone held a feed sack against his thigh. Josie stood beside him with a scoop, counting under her breath. Her braid had worked loose at the nape, and one cuff kept slipping over her hand.

“Three,” she said.

“That was four.”

“That was three and a tragic amount on your boot.”

Boone looked down. Calf supplement dusted the toe of his boot. “Still counts.”

“Not unless you plan on eating it.”

He shifted the sack so she could reach the bottom without leaning into it. She filled the scoop, tipped it into the bucket, and handed the empty scoop to him without looking.

He took it.

Such a little thing.

No negotiation. No careful explanation of why she needed both hands. She gave him something and trusted it would be held.

I stopped beside the fence.

“Running a restaurant, Boo?”

“Inspection’s over,” he said.

Josie glanced up and smiled. “He’s a difficult customer.”

“Always has been. Sent back his first bottle.”

Boone folded the sack closed.

Josie laughed, and I did too, because that was the shape of us. Me setting something rolling, Josie enjoying it, Boone pretending we were both a trial inflicted on a hardworking man.

Then she bent for the bucket.