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“Thanks very much,” Mac said.

“PJ said you might have used powder? At home? With the paste you just—”

“I know how to do it, thanks.”

“Okay,” she said, but there was something else. She reached out and touched his arm. “Hey. I’m really sorry about your mom.”

He expected condolences from the Lee boys, who’d known her, but he forgot to expect them from Jenny too. “Thanks,” he said, and though her face was wide and sympathetic, like she would have been happy to talk with him about it, he didn’t want to. “And thanks for this,” he said, holding up the toothpaste.

When he came out of the bathroom, she was gone. By the time he arranged his few things in the closet and the empty bottom drawer of the dresser, the Lees were finished hearing the letter from their mother and Martin came to find him.

“Now,” Martin said, stretching himself on the bunk across from Mac. “Be telling me all the latest. Does Margaret still work at the shop and has she asked for me?”

MONTANA DIDN’T HAVE AN OCEAN nearby and it took being in a mountainous place without one to realize how much the ocean had defined Mac’s days. At home, he knew by the dampness in the air and how the clouds hung over their back lane what kind of mood the water was in. He knew by the clack of stones and pebbles on the beach when the waves were pushing up onto land. He knew which neighbors were home by the smoke coming out of chimneys and what was drying on their lines. He knew who was passing by the rattle of their bicycles, and once in a while, a friendly bell. In Montana, smoke smelled of wood instead of turf. The breeze smelled of evergreens instead of the sweet rot of algae and brine.

PJ GAVE MAC ONE DAY of rest, encouraging him to explore the ranch, and then on his second morning in Montana they’d begin. When that morning dawned, and Martin headed down to the sawmill, PJ told Mac to stay back, he had a different plan in mind for him. “Martin said you’re good with animals. Horses in particular?”

“I don’t know about that,” Mac said, but PJ looked at him like it wasn’t time for modesty. After dropping the others at the mill, PJ came back and walked around with Mac as he pointed out some of the cattle that hung around close by. He said that Jenny’s father had four hundred head of cattle spread across three thousand acres and explained a little about how they grazed, how the winters in Montana made their care different than it was at home. “Three thousand acres,” Mac marveled, but PJ said it used to be much bigger, closer to ten thousand, but Jenny’s grandfather, and then twenty years later Jenny’s father, sold off tracts. When they’d finished walking through the areas in the immediate vicinity of the house, PJ drove him around the property and showed him where the fences needed to be mended come spring, the weather breaks where the animals sheltered.

“You’ve delivered calves?”

“A few times,” Mac said. “Not alone. I only helped.”

“I never did before I got here but there’s nothing to it, really. The cow knows what to do. It’s only if there’s trouble you might have to help.”

“By myself?”

“With whoever’s around. Bill—Jenny’s father—had a guy doing this work for as long as I’ve known Jenny, but that guy moved to Arizona last year. The rest of us were taken up with the mill so Bill hired a guy from Teaberry for a while but he wasn’t a worker, and also the seasonal guys wouldn’t listen to him. So then the idea of you coming along with Peter was raised and I pitched it to Bill.”

PJ paused. “But, Mac… I might have stretched a few facts. We’ll figure it out. The important thing is you’re here. No one knows what they’re doing at first. You should have seen Martin on the saws.”

What had Martin told PJ about Mac and horses? He’d trained a few ponies. With the blacksmith’s coaching he’d trimmed and shod quite a few horses, that was true. But the bulk of his experience was in pulling old shoes and cleaning the feet to save the blacksmith time. The dozen or so times he’d made shoes under the blacksmith’s supervision, carrying each one from forge to anvil—hammering where the blacksmith showed him—then carrying the shoe back to the pony’s foot to test the size and shape and back to the forge again, he’d found it satisfying work. There was common sense to it, once you understood the horse’s gait. Not all shoes would be identical because not all feet were identical. And you had to consider what the horse was for. Did it mostly pull? Did it run? Did it carry? Did it travel along the hard-packed lanes or did it cross soft fields? Once, when he was nailing a shoe, the horse whose foot he was grasping pulled hard without warning and Mac was thrown to the ground. When he opened his eyes he was staring up at the animal’s pale belly.

In the stable, the first two stalls held a pair of Clydesdales, brothers, at least eighteen hands at the withers. Farther down the row two more stuck their heads out.

“Look at the size of them,” Mac said. Thistle was a draft horse, heavy-boned, strong, but he wasn’t nearly as big as these creatures.

“These two are very gentle,” PJ said.

Other than Thistle, Mac had shod only local ponies or cobs, shorter than these Montana beasts by at least three hands.

“Look,” PJ said. “You’ll feed them, groom them. Get to know them. You came all this way. You’re smart. All the Joyces are smart, according to my mother.”

VERY QUICKLY, THERE CAME A rhythm to Mac’s days. He had breakfast with PJ’s family each morning and there was always tea, coffee, eggs, fruit, some kind of meat, toasted breads. It was so different from the life he left that he felt bewildered for a while, and at first never took more than a piece of toast and tea. It made home seem not only very far away but also impossible, that that place should exist in all its various moving parts at the very same time as this one. He calculated. As the sun rose over Montana it would be just after tea at home, the day winding down a little, a brief lull before the village school let out. Jenny left the fruit and the bread in a basket on the counter all day in case one of the ranch hands wanted to come in and grab something, but Macdara never did. He thought of Rian every time he looked at the fruit basket, how he would have loved to gobble an apple, how he would have heaped his plate. He pictured Rian at home in the Cuan, Nuala smug as she portioned out their meals. He pictured Rian sitting by the whale, but it was such a lonely portrait that he pushed it out of his mind.

About a half mile from PJ and Jenny’s house was what everyone called the main house, where Jenny’s father lived. PJ hadn’t included that on his tour. On Mac’s third morning in Montana, a truck could be heard pulling up to the porch and a moment later Jenny’s father walked in. “Bill Cunningham,” he barked as he extended his hand to Mac, and then to Peter, who was starting school that morning. His belly was so big it drooped down over his belt, making his already short legs seem even shorter. Grasping his hand, Mac immediately understood that this was the man in charge, and that everything in sight, down to the floorboards he was standing on and the nails that held them together, belonged to this stocky American with bright white hair and a very tan face, and not to PJ, as everyone at home had assumed.

“You’re the one who’s good with horses?”

“That’s him,” PJ answered for Mac.

“Does he talk?”

“I talk,” Macdara said.

“He just needs to be shown the way here,” PJ said, looking at him. “Different breeds and all that, but he’s a worker.”

Bill looked him up and down. “I could always use him at the mill if he can’t handle the stable.”