There are not my characters, and I make no money off of this. Thanks to my beta, Max.

Saturday morning was cold and clear. Rob shoved off early and tired to the ranch, worked his hands to the bone, and went home around dinner time, just like always. He didn't think about Jack, he didn't think about Kimmie, and truth be told he didn't think about much of anything other than the herd. If the ranch were to lose its equine herd—a primary attraction for most tourists—it would lose its life. They'd bought a new horse last week and he was stalled in the cow barn for quarantine. Rob hayed and fed the dark brown gelding, stroked him a bit and chatted him up to get to know him. Then he hayed the others, and, while they ate, broke the water on all their buckets, little shards of ice and icy water refreezing onto him in the miserable cold. That tasked done, he set to scooping grain. One of their horses was on a different feed from the others because she kept losing weight, or wouldn't put it on. It smelled like sweet dark chocolate, and he thought about the upcoming Christmas and the chocolates he'd bought for Gerry. He poured some vegetable oil on that to help, and another couple horses got some oil too. A few got bute and joint supplements added to their feed. He smelled the hay for mold even knowing it was just purchased. A couple of the horses had little cuts on their legs, probably kicking their stalls or the fence or something. He checked the heat on them and applied ointment. He never left them without checking all four legs on every last one, brushed them all, picked their hooves, and sprayed the hooves of any that needed it with part-Lysol part-water. In their snow-melt-damp stalls, opening onto a series of muddy, snowy paddocks, thrush had to be kept in check. There were other hands around to care for the other animals, and some local kids to check on the horses and muck the stalls, but this was his herd and they were damn near as good as family to Rob, every last one of the twenty, as of last week, horses.

By that time it was midmorning. Rob's other job was to do maintenance work on the ranch. In this kind of cold he wanted to check for frozen pipes. There'd been a burst pipe in one of the outbuildings, and he had to clean up the water and notify the plumber. He lunched, checked some of the fences, longed the new horse and a couple others that were begging for it, and set to their late afternoon feeding. When the sun finally set at its early winter hour, he headed on home. Today was Christmas Eve. He almost didn't hardly care.

But clearly Gerry and Kimmie did. Gerry had come home early from her work in the ranch kitchen to work in her own. The entire house smelled of ham, and she had pots on every burner. Kimmie's curly hair was tied back in triple pigtails with rubber bands, a rush job, clearly, for a girl who preferred functionality over beauty, though she always managed to make the functionality look beautiful in the process. Kimmie looked up from where a mixer was spraying cream-colored liquid all over the counter, and even mixing a little in the pie tin, to give her granddad a little wave.

Gerry pulled her head out of the oven, talking loud over the mixer, "Dad, do you think you could start a fire?"

"Sure thing, darlin'." Rob scurried outside, to the woodpile, grateful to be out of the busy kitchen.

Dinner sat thick in his stomach as he stretched out in front of the fire with a beer in his hand. Kimmie and Gerry were going to late evening Christmas Eve church, but Rob hadn't been to church since he'd been married to Lynn. They didn't even bother asking him.

Tonight, though, only Gerry came down dressed, in a cream sweater and blown slacks. Kimmie was trailing her closely, mother and daughter, but wearing comfortable flannel striped pajamas.

"You ain't goin' a church?"

"Huh? Oh no, I don't feel like it," she shrugged.

"Gerry, you ok goin' alone?"

"Dad, I'm a grown woman. I think I can handle church."

Kimmie giggled. Rob grunted. Gerry left. And they were all alone.

Weighty silence fell like it never had between the two. Rob shifted back to face the fire, but he wasn't looking at it at all, his face contorted, mind on the girl behind him. He hated not knowing what to expect. He gripped his beer bottle tightly.

Kimmie turned on her heel and headed towards the kitchen.

Several minutes later and after the shrill cry of a tea kettle, Kimmie returned, cradling a mug. She sat in the armchair to Rob's left, directly across from the Christmas tree. She was gripping a tan notebook with some sort of flower design on it.

They sat like that for a good long while, neither speaking. Rob was expecting Kimmie to either run away or dive right in and ask about Jack, but she didn't start with either.

"Have you ever thought of moving somewhere else?"

"Huh? Where?"

"I don't know. New England, maybe."

"Uh, nope." He rubbed his hands down his dirty jeans.

"Yeah, I didn't think so." She looked wistful. Silence took over for a moment, but Kimmie braved ahead. "I, uh, I read this story. In it you moved to Connecticut. It was cute."

"Whaddya mean I moved to Connecticut?"

She shrugged. "Never mind. It was just a story."

Finally the silence grew too heavy between them, and he decided to try a topic he thought was on the edge of the white elephant, but on a part he could handle.

"I, uh, first time I met Annie?" He looked over at her under heavy brows, and her eyes met his cautiously. He looked back down to continue. "I was in this bar. Just tryin' a get out for the evenin' I guess. Watchin' some guys play pool. Saw her. She was, uh, watchin' me. From the bar? After a while she introduced herself. Guess she noticed I saw her. She came ta visit me at the ranch coupl'a times after that." He shrugged. "Was back when she was new in town." He took another sip of beer and looked up at Kimmie for her reaction.

Kimmie was staring thoughtfully into her tea, a frown across her face. That frown looked so damn familiar too, and Rob didn't like to see it there. She fingered the edge of her notebook gently.

"Darlin', weren't you wantin' ta write this down?"

"Don't really care about that part, granddad."

"Whell, what part you want, then?"

"You know which. The part where you and…" her voice failed her, and she tried again. "Where you were, I mean, you and… Jack…"

Kimmie was usually so free with words. He wasn't used to seeing her choke. Rob took a huge breath, biggest he felt he'd ever taken. He set his eyes on the fire.

"Alright then. Hope you got plenty a ink."

The ghost of a smile passed by her lips, and her eyes simply came alive as she opened her notebook.

The happy times, he reminded himself. That was all she wanted. He hoped there'd be enough to at least cramp her wrist, but he somehow doubted it. But maybe so.

"Was, uh, summer a nineteen sixty three. I was lookin' for any kind a summer job as could gain me a little cash and let me work with stock. Was hopin' that meant cattle, but what I could get was sheep…" he kept his eyes fixed on the fire, and just spilled the G-rated version to Kimmie's drinking eyes. Her pen flashed across the cream-colored pages, capturing Rob and Jack on paper for the very first time. Seemed odd, the progeny coming before the paper union, but him and Jack had always done things a little queer.

And so he told, told about Jack's boyish laugh, the damned harmonica he loved to hate, the time Jack'd flavored the steak so spicy he'd cried. He remembered with particular fondness a nighttime race—left out to Kimmie that they'd been stark naked. He told all those stories and as many more as he could think of, finding as he told that he mostly just wanted to tell more, finding as he remembered that he mostly wanted to remember more.

"Kim? Kim? Time for bed, honey." Gerry was shaking Kimmie's shoulder. The old VCR read 1:20. Rob yawned and stretched. He had to work tomorrow, too, but he would go in a bit late so they could open presents together. Still, he couldn't sleep in if he wanted to, and his bedtime had passed by long ago for the second night in a row.

Kimmie stumbled to her feet, and being a girl with priorities, went straight to the kitchen for a homemade Christmas cookie before returning, cookie half-in-mouth, to hug her mom and granddad goodnight and wish them Marry Christmas through a full mouth. Rob snaked a weary arm around her shoulder and hugged her tightly to his own, feeling her gentle warmth. It seemed to him she'd just been born yesterday, far away in Texas, but she was already a woman full-grown. "Night, baby," he whispered to her.

She stopped to pick up her weary notebook, once pristine, but now with pages bent and writing scribbled along all the little grey lines, and stumbled up the stairs.

"How was church," Rob asked Gerry.

"Oh, nice. Mrs. O'Donnell's oldest son, you remember Kelly, right?"

"Huh, yeah, Kelly-the-boy."

Gerry rolled her eyes. "Well he's gettin' married."

"Yeah,'s that to a woman named Ted? Or mebbe not a woman." Rob frowned.

"Dad, did you just, argh, nevermind! Alright? And I have no clue what her name is."

"Frank mebbe. Or Tom."

"Dad!"

"Kelly ain't a boy's name."

"It is in Ireland."

"Ain't Ireland, it's Wyomin'."

"Just—jus' go to bed, Dad. Ok?"

"Yup." He groaned pulling himself off the sofa.

He was snatching a cookie himself and turning towards the stairs when Gerry met him mid-kitchen.

"Wait-- did you talk to Kimmie, then?"

"Yup. Wasn't too bad."

"Ok." She heaved a sigh of something that looked like relief.

"Still think you should tell her."

"About what?"

"About Jack. Bob Williams, I mean. 'Bout her father n' all."

"Dad, I told her that before you even came home today. You mean she didn't tell you?"

Rob's eyes flew open, cookie already halfway in his mouth. He bit down hard on it, and must have forgotten to chew, because it choked him a little bit.

"You alright?"

"Yeah. Uh, yeah. I just didn't…" He wasn't sure what this changed, but he tried to spin back through his entire conversation with Kimmie, looking for some glaring flaw or inappropriate detail in his description, but doubting there was any. This didn't change anything.

"It's alright, Dad. Just go to bed."

Rob could barely managed a grunt as he dragged a body that felt weary with just about every arthritic ache he had up the five steps that brought him to the small attached "second floor." He stumbled into his twin bed in an otherwise empty room and let those dreams come over him as they did every night. Indeed, even though he'd told the whole story to Kimmie, Kimmie who was somehow his-and-Jack's by the humor of some maleficent God, nothing had changed.

But something had. He was still achy and weary and tired, but he felt about a hundred pounds lighter with every exhalation. Maybe there was something to this telling-people thing, after all.