And understood plain and certain as any fact he had ever known about horses or weather or hard dry land. That whatever words came next between the two of them whenever they finally came, he intended to spend the whole rest of his ordinary patient life, making certain she never again had cause to wonder whether a single soul on this earth cared what happened to her. The rest of it, the larger words, the promises neither had given voice to, yet whatever shaped their shared future finally settled into. Come spring, whatever the search for Sula might still bring to either of their doors could come in its own good and unhurried time, the way the best and truest things on that dry stretch of territory always had. For now, her hand resting steady in his and the sky burning slow toward dark above Antelope Creek was answer enough for both of them, and neither one saw any good reason at all to rush toward more than that.
Somewhere out past the dark tree line, the horses settled for the night, one by one. The ordinary sounds of a ranch easing itself down toward sleep the same unhurried way it had every evening since long before a wounded stranger had ever crossed its threshold, and would, Rhett suspected. He thought of that first burnt orange sunset, and of a canteen left waiting on a flat gray rock between two people who had owed each other nothing at all beyond the plain human decision to be kind. He thought of a bracelet given freely and a name given freely after it. And a whole quiet season of small unhurried gifts passed back and forth between two people who had each in their own separate ways believed themselves finished with the business of being surprised by their own lives.
Whatever spring finally asked of either one of them a journey north to learn Sula's fate. A harder conversation neither had quite worked up the nerve for yet. The larger words still waiting patient in both their chests. Rhett found he wasn't afraid of any of it any longer. Not with her hands steady in his, and this particular sky burning slow toward dark above land, that had somehow, without his ever quite noticing the exact moment it happened, become theirs together, rather than only his alone.