I put my hand on her ankle.

She let me leave it there.

She’s seventeen. The moments when she lets me leave my hand anywhere are fewer than they used to be.

“Who do you want to walk you out?” I asked. “Not who you’re supposed to want. Who.”

She thought about it longer than I expected.

Then she said, “Can Grandpa do it?”

My father is Duane Ostrem. He’s seventy-nine years old.

He milked Holsteins on the same quarter section east of town for fifty-one years. Twice a day. Three hundred and sixty-five days a year.

He sold the herd in 2011. The spring after my mother died.

He said the cows didn’t need a man who talked to them that much.

He still lives on the place. He still gets up at 4:30 every morning.

He had his left hip replaced two winters ago. He’s walked with a cane ever since. A plain wooden hickory cane, with a rubber tip he replaces from the farm store when it wears through.