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There's no conversation about whose turn it is unless both of us are trying to get out of it.

Last Christmas, I was sitting on the hallway floor at three in the morning, crying harder than the twins and trying not to wake my mother. This Christmas, Carson carries Graham under one arm and flips eggs with the other.

“You’re burning those,” I say.

He looks at the pan. “Shit.”

“Language.”

Mom says it at the same time I do. Carson looks offended, like we're ganging up on him.

“I’m outnumbered.”

“It's called being aware of your audience.”

After breakfast, we bundle everybody up and go outside. There's barely any snow left, just white caught along the fence posts and in the shade of the barn. Carson has twenty-five cows in the near pasture and another twelve he bought in the spring.

The twenty-five are the ones he pulled out of the Wyoming herd before he'd even decided for sure he was leaving. His best young cows he kept separate while he figured out what he could let go and what he couldn't. Every one of them made the trip east.

I know them all now, including the one I named over the phone before either of us had any idea she'd end up here with us.

Wade stayed with the ranch when it sold. Same dirt, different owner. Carson says Wade was probably part of the sale whether anybody wrote it down or not. Wade says the new owners are decent, which from him is basically a five-star review.

Dutch sold his property to the same buyers and moved to Florida with Vera. He says the only livestock he deals with now are the pelicans that steal bait off the dock. He still calls Carson every Sunday to ask about the cows.

“There,” I tell Hildie. “That one.”

She points at a completely different cow. “Cow.”

“That's right. Mooo.”

Carson comes up behind me with Graham on his shoulders.

“You still calling her Mackie?”

“That is her name.”

“That is not what her tag says.”

“I don’t care what her tag says.”

He leans down and kisses the side of my head.

“That's my girl.”

I walk her down toward the lower pasture because the twins insist on seeing the tractor. We pass under the sign Carson hung over the gate in March, ASHBY CREEK burned into the board in letters he cut himself, and Graham reaches up from Carson's shoulders to slap it the way he does every single time.

By the time we get back, Graham is asleep against Carson’s chest and Hildie is dragging one mitten by the teeth.

Mom has gone inside to start whatever she brought in the second pan. I stop at the porch steps and Carson turns around.

“What?”

“Tomorrow morning, you’re taking them.”

He shifts Graham higher.

“Where?”