Snow, just a dusting, lay upon the meadow the following morning, but it was gone before lunch. Dee replaced the stitches in Jack’s shoulder, and he spent an hour butchering steaks out of the tenderloins, then made a dry rub from the available spices in the kitchen, which he worked into the meat.

He found a wiffle ball set in the shed. They used empty milk jugs for bases and weeded a pitcher’s mound and held a series, boys versus girls, that concluded in game seven when Cole knocked a line drive over third base that brought Jack home.

The afternoon Jack spent sitting on the porch drinking beer and watching Dee and the kids playing in the meadow. He wouldn’t allow himself to think back or forward, but only to register the moment—the wind moving through gold aspen leaves, his skin warm in the sun, the sound of Cole’s laughter, the shape of Dee when, every so often, she turned to look back toward the porch. Her shoulders were brown and the details of her face obscured by distance, but he could still pick out the white brushstroke of her smile.

As another day set sail, Jack grilled the elk steaks and a rainbow trout and surprised everyone with a bottle of 1994 Silver Oak he’d found hidden away in a cabinet over the sink. They gathered at the kitchen table and ate by candlelight, even Cole getting his own small pour of wine in a shot glass. Toward the end of supper, Jack stood and raised his glass and toasted his son, his daughter, and his wife. Then he said to everyone, his voice breaking only once, that of all the days of his life, this had been the finest.