Stars Go Blue by Laura Pritchett

First, he says, she must dial the number to his daughter’s house.
    Renny sighs but dials Carolyn’s number and says, “The answering machine will pick up. Or Jess will. Although she never does. They’re in Mexico. They’re trying to do what we failed at doing, for a while at least. Keeping love alive through the tough spots. When it beeps, leave a message. Tell her whatever it is that you want to tell her.” Her voice is kind, like the touches she used to give him. She holds the phone out and he holds it to his ear and waits for the beep.
    Phones are difficult. He can’t see the person’s expression and so the words just smear around. But this will be okay, because it is his only choice. He hears his daughter’s voice, not the voice she was as a girl but something that sounds very close to it, and then he hears a pause, he hears a beep. “Tell ya what I’m gonna do, see,” he says into her answering machine. “I’m gonna tell you I love you. Good-bye, now. Carolyn. Jack, Leanne, Billy, Jess, Del, Carolyn. Tell ya what I’m gonna do, see. Love to you all.” His voice gets very quiet, as if turned down on its own.

RENNY
    T he bravest thing she can do is to let him be. She wards off the fear by doing the chores herself and doing them early and well. She’ll stay out of the house as long as she can. She breaks the ice on the water tanks with a tamping bar, throws hay to the donkeys and horses, fills her pockets with the dried apple slices she made herself in the summer (she remembers the smell of her sweat and the way the bees and wasps buzzed around her as she sat outside cutting apples and putting them on cookie sheets to dry). The horses nuzzle them softly from her shaking hand, their eyes darkened with gratitude. The hens are all huddled in the chicken house early, and she sends the ice from their drinking pans shattering outside on the ground before refilling them. She wipes the tears streaming down her face continually, and something about this makes her think of her DNA, of how hers falls into trampled hay, or into dirt, or into snow, or onto an apple that gets eaten by a horse and how she is now a part of that horse literally, which somehow makesher less alone because she is binding with bits of the universe, and so is Ben, at this very moment.
    She can see Jess has been there again. There’s a pile of fresh horse manure by the barn and tracks in the snow—her own horses could not have made those tracks, penned in as they are. Renny glances around, but there is no sign of her now. She could use Jess right about now. Funny, she decides, how important it is, simply having another breathing living human next to you during heart-slashing times. Even if you don’t talk.
    Though she has not walked out back in months, despite the dropping temperature and spitting snow and lowering sun—despite all this—she takes a walk now. She is so cold. She is so tired. She must stay out of the house, because then the decision will have been made. It will be over. It’s an act of cowardice and bravery at the same time.
    Satchmo follows her, rolling and pouncing on wind-swept snowdrifts and yet somehow obedient, as if she knows that Renny is close to a certain line that should not be crossed. The dog comes jogging up to Renny sometimes and snuffles her hand with a nose, and Renny relents finally and pets her head with her gloved hand and despite herself finds herself mumbling things like Okay, you stupid dog, okay, don’t worry, your family will be home soon.
    She wonders if she should run home and call someone. Perhaps Eddie, Ben’s oldest friend. Perhaps Ruben, the vet. Perhaps Jess. But no: She will not burden them with this particular load. Only she could possibly understand. Only she could love Ben enough to give him the freedom.
    At Ben’s cabin, she pulls off the leather work gloves and lets herself in the door. The silence feels as