Cool Water by Dianne Warren

watch because he never confessed and, worse, he lied when confronted. He wonders, if Astrid were here to ask him about the watch now, would he have the courage to tell her the truth?—the truth she already knew, he’s sure of that, which would make coming clean all the harder. What had he been thinking when he threw the watch in the sand? He’d panicked because the crime of going into Lester’s private things had seemed huge. Privacy was sacrosanct to Lester.
    Lee looks down the sandy trail with its two tracks disappearing into the night, and then continues on to the north. He admires his clean black field in the moonlight, even though the practice of summer fallowing is no longer recommended by the agriculturalists because of the resulting moisture loss. But what are you going to do, Lester used to say, when you see the weeds coming up and don’t want to pump more money into herbicides? Lee hadn’t known what to do with the field either, so he’d done what Lester always had: turned the weeds under before they went to seed.
    When he reaches the northern edge of the black field, he crosses into a field of stubble—a poor crop harvested early for feed. The horse moves under him, content enough now to be going somewhere. He settles into an easy jog and Lee gets the impression they could go forever like this. He’s surprised at how smooth the horse is—he’s heard that Arab horses are rough to ride.
    North of the stubble field is a standing crop, so Lee rides the strip between the field and the ditch. Another crop, another quarter of old summer fallow, this one full of rocks and weeds and gopher holes. He lets the horse pick his way through and admires his ability to do so, the way he can place his feet so carefully and at the same time stay tuned in to any sound or movement around him, a perfectly adapted prey animal.
    When they’re through the summer fallow, they come to another standing crop, oats this time, ready for harvest from the look of it, and Lee is forced into the ditch. It’s clean, with the grass cut and baled, and he rides there for another mile. With every new field ahead he considers turning around and going home, but only briefly because the tug is away from home and sleep and the next day waiting. When they reach the southern edge of the Swan Valley Community pasture, Lee almost turns back knowing that the pasture stretches for miles, but beyond it is the cemetery—where Astrid and Lester are buried. He makes the decision to keep going that far, to the graveyard, and the ground passes beneath him until he can see it up ahead, first the trees in the distance, and when he gets close enough the dark outlines of the headstones, most of them old and no longer perfectly upright. He slows the horse and they enter the cemetery under a wrought-iron archway, crafted years ago by a local blacksmith.
    Not many people get buried here any more. The preference now is for the town cemetery where the lawn is watered and manicured, but Lee is glad Lester and Astrid chose this as their resting place. There’s no church to clutter the landscape, no plastic flowers to fade and turn into refuse, just the tumbleweed blown up against the fence to catch on the barbed wire, and the remains of virgin prairie, blue grama and spear grass. He likes the wildness, the grass fighting against the threat of drifting sand.
    Lee hasn’t been to visit the graveyard since Astrid’s funeral. He dismounts and leads the horse around the grave markers until he finds himself looking at the double headstone with both Astrid’s and Lester’s names carved in the marble. The stone—with its dates of death just four years apart—is one of only a few recent markers, and the mound of earth over Astrid’s grave has not yet completely settled. Eventually, a concrete pad will cover her, a partner to the one that covers Lester. Even in the moonlight Lee can’t quite read the