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She read the top line twice and couldn't think of one thing to say to him. It had been happening twice a week since the van went and she was getting no better at it.

"Is it wrong?" he said.

"No."

"Then say something, Liv, you're worrying me."

"I'm allowed a minute. It's my yard."

"It is," Owen said. "And there's a horse in that barn hollering at me since I got out of the truck. He's your yard's problem, not mine."

Ainsley came at nine to ride Duke. Brody came with her, the way he came everywhere now, and they were arguing before they got the doors open.

"—and I said to him, that is not what a hydrologist does, that is what a plumber does, and he didn’t care for it."

"You're going to get fired."

"I have been trying to get fired since April." Brody got out and looked at the trap and stopped where he was. "Well, hell."

"Six," Olivia said.

"Is that the brindle?"

"That's the brindle."

"That cow stepped on my foot in April and never apologized," Brody said. "I've thought about her more than is healthy." He went over to the fence to look at her. Ainsley went past all of it to the barn without a word to anybody, because Duke had heard her truck and started up again.

They got the horse out and Ainsley got on him in the open yard where anybody could see her do it. She rode him down the drive and back at a jog with her face doing nothing at all. Olivia had learned that was Ainsley about as happy as she got.

"He's fat," Ainsley said, coming back.

"He's happy."

"He's fat and happy and he's forgotten every single thing I taught him." She swung down. "I'm coming Tuesdays."

"You're not asking."

"I'm not, no. You had him four months and put a rein on him twice."

"I had a year going on."

"You had a year going on and a horse standing in a barn," Ainsley said, "and one of those was fixable by anybody with a Tuesday, so I'm taking Tuesdays."

"Take Tuesdays."

"Thank you."

Brody was still at the trap fence with his boot up. "You'll want somebody for the fall calving."

"I'll want three of you for the fall calving," Olivia said. "And I've got a room full of five-year-olds from the third week of August, so I'll want them at six in the morning."

"I'm here."

"You're saying that in June."

"I'm saying it in front of my cousin and my cousin's sister and a cow that assaulted me," Brody said. "That's how a man makes it stick. If I'm not in this yard in September you can tell the whole county what I am."

"I will."