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and mostly grass grew. Trees lined small creeks and sagebrushthrived on exposed slopes. Barbed wire fences marked off small ranches, while narrow asphalt or dirt roads snaked off up the shoulders of ridges dressed in grass or sage and aspen.
    After some miles, the top of the highest grassy ridges sprouted giant mansions placed above old ranch structures farther down the slopes. The old homes were all but falling down now. The new homes were supersized, decked out in finery that was sometimes restrained and more often looked like a TV reality show in waiting. She’d bet that ninety percent of the mansions were uninhabited.
    Sara would have expected this sort of growth in upstate New York or even outside Atlanta, where she’d been decorating and appointing the inside of a house not unlike these. But not here, in the middle of ranching country.
    I probably shouldn’t look at it this way, but are these new places really such an improvement on the landscape? Were the old ranch houses so bad that they had to be left to rot from neglect while empty mansions are built?
    Nothing answered her question except the complex reality that life changed.
    Below the ridgetops, the flat land was empty of all but ranch fencing, occasional cattle, and the grass that bent beneath the wind. Silver ripples gleamed in irrigation ditches.
    â€œI don’t see many cows,” she said finally.
    â€œIt’s been a hard winter and a late spring. Price of hay was so high a lot of the small ranchers had to sell off stock.”
    â€œDid you?”
    â€œVermilion Ranch has its own hay meadows. We weathered it better than most.”
    â€œYou’re lucky,” she said, remembering. “My father had too much family and too few milk cows to make ends meet anywhere near the middle.”
    â€œHard work and plenty of it,” Jay agreed. “When I was young, I couldn’t wait to leave the ranch and see the world.”
    â€œAnd you did,” she said, remembering fragments of previous conversations.
    â€œYes. I left when I was eighteen. Didn’t come back until a few years ago. A long time.”
    â€œI’m still gone. Can’t think of anything that would drag me back. What changed your mind?”
    â€œAfghanistan.”
    She knew a conversation closer when she heard it, yet she said, “One of my younger brothers feels the same. He—Look out!”
    Before the words left her mouth, Jay had braked and swerved to avoid the deer bounding across the road. He missed it by inches.
    â€œDeer have to be the dumbest thing on hooves,” he said, quickly guiding the truck back into the correct lane. “Wonder what ran it out of daytime cover.”
    â€œA bear?” Sara asked, her voice thinned with adrenaline.
    â€œMore likely stray dogs.”
    His voice hadn’t changed. She had a feeling that it would take more than a kamikaze deer to lift his blood pressure.
    She forced herself to look away from his compelling features to the scenery outside.
    The road climbed, wound around, and climbed some more. For a time there were aspen groves in every crease and sometimes on the ridgeline itself. High-end houses disappeared. Though ranch fences remained, the country looked wilder. Some of the fences were very old, made of wood that had turned pale gray beneath relentless weathering.
    When they left the highway, the surface of the road went from asphalt to graded gravel.
    â€œHow far does this road go?” Sara asked.
    â€œAbout thirty miles before it dead-ends at Mitchell’s ranch gate. There are some nice moose bogs down in the bottoms along the way.” Jay slowed. “Hang on, hard turn coming.”
    â€œMore deer?”
    â€œNarrow road and a tourist riding my bumper. Damn fool is in a city car. If he keeps going, he’ll get stuck in the mud holes ahead.”
    Despite Jay’s turn signal, the car kept riding his bumper. He said something under his breath as he