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When it's time, I get my bag, and he gets off the floor. "I'll follow you back."

"It's three miles. I’m good, Carson.”

"I'll follow you back."

His headlights sit in my mirror the whole way, all four miles, and stay at the curb while I climb my steps and get the door open and reach in and turn on the light.

It's Friday, July seventeenth, eight in the morning. I know the date the same as I know my own numbers. One thirty-four over eighty-four, taken sitting, arm at heart level, typed into the Notes app under the morning column.

It's been ten days. In that time, Carson has shown up every single day, come to two doctor's appointments, sat through another round of monitoring, and learned which teas I can drink.

Today is the tenth day, the day he was always supposed to fly back. I haven't asked about the flight once, and he hasn't brought it up. The only proof he still plans to leave is the calculation I found on the back of that receipt a few days ago.

Somebody knocks.

I open the door and Carson's standing there with a cup in each hand and a bag of hardware hooked on two fingers. He holds one cup out.

"It's an organic chai with no caffeine. The barista said it was her favorite."

I take it from him and inhale the cinnamon. It's still warm out, but I’ve grown to love chai tea, even in the summer.

He goes straight to the bassinet nearest the window, sets his coffee down on the sill, kneels, and starts working a leg with the hex wrench.

That leg is level. I know it's level because I watched him level it four days ago and I watched him check it twice since. I take my tea into the kitchen doorway and lean on the frame while he fixes a thing that isn't broken. His shoulders work and the wrench clicks. He tips the frame, sights down it, sets it back.

I let myself have one question all week. I've been saving it. "What time's your flight?"

"Changed it."

That's all he gives me. Not the new day or the hour. He turns the wrench a quarter turn and stops. I let it go.

"Okay."

Lis comes through in her robe, sees him kneeling there on a Friday morning with a wrench in his hand, pours her coffee, and stirs it. She doesn't say one word, carrying the mug back down the hall.

I take my chai out to the balcony, lower myself into the chair, and get my feet up on the stool. Every day I have to get my feet up a little earlier.

The water's flat and bright past the rail. A pelican drops on something and comes up with nothing.

Through the slider, I hear him rock the bassinet. He listens, adjusts, and rocks it again. The leg was already level, but I guess he’s making it more level.

FIFTEEN

Carson

Christians, awake, salute the happy morn / Whereon the Saviour of the world was born

Six-forty in the morning, and I’m at Hildie’s kitchen table with coffee, the calving book, and yesterday’s numbers spread out in front of me. It’s already seventy-eight degrees outside. In Wyoming, Wade is trying to beat the rain.

The phone buzzes. It’s Wade.

"Window's tight," he says when I click to answer, but before I even have a chance to say hello. "Thursday through Sunday, then it rains. I can't do the whole meadow on the days that boy's there."

"Then he's there every day. Put him on."

"Every day."

"Every day it's fit to cut. Pay him for all of it."