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[FIVE]

He rose at four and pulled on his pants and boots and jacket. The house was cold as glass and he tried to coax life out of the remnants of the fireplace but there was nothing there. He tucked his hands into his armpits and went outside. The air was frigid, the sky an open box with no real hint of sunlight yet, and he traipsed through the near paddock to the barn. The cow, Hong, heard his approach and mooed hopefully. He led her inside, positioned the bucket, and took his place on the stool. He massaged milk from her teats, resting his forehead against her side for the warmth. He fell asleep like this sometimes, slipping into dreams of death and words. Then Hong would take a step or two away, jerking him awake.

Filling the bucket took eight minutes. It had seemed ridiculously slow at first. He’d craved greater efficiency. But it was a good lesson in reconnecting. He now enjoyed it as a chance to exist in the moment. There was no past or future when you milked a cow. You were just milking.

He carried the bucket back to the house and transferred its contents to six bottles. The cat curled around his boots, purring like a tractor, and he gave her a little, too. He built a little tepee of sticks and newspaper and lit the fire. By then the first rays were creeping along the tree line, and he paused to watch. The best thing about this house was the view. He could walk around it and see forty miles in every direction. If a car was approaching, he would know thirty minutes before it arrived. The sky was wide and empty. It was a good house.

He heard bare feet on floorboards and Emily emerged, her eyes full of sleep, her cotton nightdress running down from her shoulders.

“You should be sleeping,” he said.

“You can’t tell me what to do.”

“No,” he said. “You have that backward.”

She came to him. They kissed. The fire crackled. She tucked herself against him.

“Want to watch the sun come up?”

“Sure,” she said.

He grabbed two blankets from the pile and threw one over the bench seat he’d built on the veranda. He put an arm around her and threw the other blanket over them. She rested her head on his shoulder. The sun freed itself from the tree line and he felt its warmth on his face.

“I love you,” she said. She nestled closer, her hand moving up the back of his neck. The wind lifted.

“Don’t kill me,” he said.

“I’m not going to,” she said.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Acknowledgments used to be rare glimpses inside the author’s mind when he/she wasn’t trying to lie to you. Stephen King had some of the best. They were long and rambling, like you’d caught him after dinner and a few glasses of wine. I grew up in rural Australia, the nearest bookstore a town away, and Stephen King never toured there, not even on a motorcycle
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. I didn’t even realize authors did tours. Acknowledgments were all I had. They were blogs, before blogs were a thing.

Now blogs are a thing, and tweets, and you never need to wonder what any author thinks about anything. Which is a little sad, I feel, for Acknowledgments. They’ve been reduced to a parade of names. Important names, if you are the author, or one of the names. The names are the reason we have Acknowledgments. But still. I liked the rambles.

My important names begin with the usual suspects: those people who read my first drafts and then, six months later, my second drafts (“Try to pretend like you don’t know what’s going to happen”), and so on, for far too long. You might think this doesn’t sound too bad, getting a sneak peek at a book, but that’s because you don’t realize how terribly broken my drafts are. Imagine your favorite story, only every so often the characters do stupid things for no reason and then nothing ends like it should. It’s horrible, right? It’s not merely
less good
; it ruins the whole thing. I am very grateful to those people who let me ruin stories for them, especially Todd Keithley, Charles Thiesen, Kassy Humphries, Jason Laker, Jo Keron, and John Schoenfelder.

Thank you to everyone who keeps publishing me. Many people put a great deal of work into each and every book, and if they do a good job, the author gets all the credit. There are editors and marketing people, assistants and copy editors, translators and salespeople, buyers and bookstore employees, designers and techs, and plenty more. Thank you for all the times you did a little more than you had to. In particular, thanks to my U.S. and UK editors, Colin Dickerman and Ruth Tross, who steered me through the final draft with insight and precision, which is like a gift to an author.

Luke Janklow is my go-to guy, literary agent by name, guardian angel by nature. I don’t know what I’d do without him, but I bet it would suck. Claire Dippel, the wind beneath Luke’s wings, can do just about anything, apparently, while remaining bright and good-natured. Almost suspiciously so. Thank you, both.

Most of all, thank you, Jen, for making this possible. There isn’t a single piece of this that works without you. Not the book, not the writing, not me. Definitely not me.

And, hey. You. Thanks for being the kind of person who likes to pick up a book. That’s a genuinely great thing. I met a librarian recently who said she doesn’t read because books are her job and when she goes home, she just wants to switch off. I think we can agree that that’s as creepy as hell. Thank you for seeking out stories, the kind that take place in your brain.

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In 1997, Stephen King rode across Australia on a Harley-Davidson.“Until you get here you don’t realize how different it is,” he told the
Kalgoorlie Miner
. “[America’s West] is empty but you always see a power line or a house twinkling off in the distance. Out here there’s fucking nothing.”