They paid attention and they acted on what they saw, and they didn't make a speech about it. It was an efficient way to be. It was also, he was finding, oddly companionable, in a way he hadn't expected and didn't have an easy word for. Lucy asked him about the land one afternoon while he was repairing the gate hinge on the south fence. She'd been following him around for part of the morning, which she did sometimes with the permission of benign neglect rather than invitation.
Just appearing near whatever he was doing and watching, or asking questions when they occurred to her. Or sometimes saying nothing at all and just being nearby in the way that certain children could be present without requiring anything from you. How long have you had this ranch? She said. 17 years, he said.
That's a very long time. It is. She sat down on the fence rail cautiously, because she'd been told not to and was demonstrating that she'd at least thought about the instruction before deciding it didn't apply to this specific rail at this specific moment. Were you here alone the whole time? Not the whole time, he said.
She waited in the patient way she had. He drove the new bolt through the hinge without looking up. I had a wife, he said. For the first 9 years. Lucy was quiet for a moment.
What was her name? Clara. That's pretty, she said. What happened to her? He tightened the nut on the bolt and tested the gate.
It swung clean. She died, he said. An accident. Out on the north range. Were you sad for a long time?
He looked at her. She was watching him with that steady, unadorned curiosity of hers. Not prying, not prodding, just genuinely wanting to know, the way children ask about things before they've learned that some questions make adults uncomfortable because the truth is complicated. Yes, he said. Is that why you put the picture down?
He hadn't told her what the picture was. He'd forgotten somehow that she'd already solved it herself. "Yes," he said. She nodded slowly as if this confirmed theory. "When Mama cried after Papa died," she said, "she told us that being sad about someone you loved meant that the love was real.
She said that was the point of being sad. It's just love with nowhere to go." He looked at her for a moment. "She's smart," he said.