They passed the milking parlor, spotlessly clean. A dozen black-and-white Holsteins were lined up, heads locked into stanchions, in a concrete holding area. Teresa breathed in the odors, which she’d never found objectionable. Setting down the tray, she went straight to work.

“Number 23,” she said, peering at the ear tag.

The farmer nodded and referred to his clipboard. “Bred September 5.”

Teresa inserted her hand into the cow’s rectum and began cleaning it out. Green manure splashed at her feet. Eventually, concentrating, she reached in deep, feeling through the wall of the rectum for the uterus and the pea-size growth of a new calf. She smiled when she found it.

“Pregnant.”

The farmer nodded and made a check on his list.

“Number 138,” she said, moving on to the next cow. The rump shifted away and she grabbed the tail.

“September 10.”

“Nope,” she concluded at last.

They fell into a rhythm that she remembered and enjoyed; few words were exchanged, and those were to the point. Along with the pregnancy checks, she examined the cows that had recently given birth, treating a few for infections.

When she finished the first batch, the farmer released the metal stanchions and waved the animals out into a loafing area. Another man chased the next ten in. Grain lured them to thrust their heads through the locking mechanism. Teresa shook liquid manure off her arm, clad in clear plastic, and called out the first number.

When she was done, she threw away her plastic sleeve and hosed herself down. Manure sluiced off her boots and overalls.

The farmer asked if she wanted to look around, and she agreed. In a separate barn, she paused, gazing down at the calves. She scratched a snowy white soft head, and lips nuzzled her hand.

“Daughter takes care of those,” the farmer said.

Teresa nodded. Bottle-feeding the calves was often a woman’s job on a dairy farm. Typically the newborn calves were allowed to nurse for the first three to four days, for the sake of the health-giving colostrum, then bottle-raised on a milk replacer so the more valuable milk could be sold. By the time they were a month old, the calves were weaned even from that.

“Do you raise your own heifers?” Teresa asked.

He shook his head. “We send ours at three or four months to a farm in eastern Washington to be raised. Don’t have enough pasture here.”

That, too, she’d gathered, was typical of dairies on this side of the mountains. This farmer had a dairy herd of perhaps 160 cows, and as little as fifty or sixty acres. He wouldn’t be growing his own hay, either, as a larger farm might. Yet she was impressed with the cleanliness of the barns and the condition of the herd. The pregnancy rate was high, too, a sign that everything else was going well.

The tour over, the farmer walked her out to her truck. “Eric be back next month?”

Her heart sank at the question. “Probably,” she said, “although eventually we’d like me to be handling half the calls.”

“You’re quicker at the preg checks than he is,” the dairyman said unexpectedly.

A compliment? Or was he implying that she’d gone so fast as to seem careless?

“I always had a knack.”

“Either of you want to handle calls here, that’s fine.”

She felt like babbling gratefully. Instead, she nodded and offered him a smile with enough wattage to hint that he’d given her a gift. “You have a nice place. I look forward to working with you.”

He nodded now; she climbed into the truck, waved and drove away. Barely out of his sight, she began caroling, “Oh, what a beautiful morning!”

Of course, her whole day couldn’t be that easy. Three of the remaining farmers greeted her matter-of-factly. Three were wary and noncommittal. Two refused to let her do the preg checks. The last grudgingly let her into the barn only because he had two cases of milk fever and desperately needed her to wield the syringe that would have his cows leaping to their feet and strolling off to the loafing shed as though nothing had ever been wrong.

He watched them go suspiciously, as though she might somehow have tricked both the cows and him. After a moment he grunted. “Since you’re already here…”

She was tempted to try to work even faster to impress him. She curtailed the temptation. A mistake would kill her reputation for good. Instead, she worked deliberately, calling out numbers, wrestling with recalcitrant cow butts, confirming and denying pregnancy.

She was examining a pretty little Jersey when the farmer said gruffly, “That one has a blocked teat. Feels like a pea in there.”

“I’ll take a look when I’m done,” she said.

They herded the Jersey into a station in the milking parlor, where Teresa could stand in the center aisle, three feet below the stall level. As the cow shifted restlessly, she manipulated the long pale teat.

“Let me tranquilize her,” Teresa said after a moment. She chose the base of the tail for the injection and waited until the cow swayed. Then she pulled out her forceps and probed inside. It took only a moment to remove the hard whitish blob.

She showed it to the farmer. “Scar tissue. Probably left over from mastitis.”

He grunted. “Snipped the teat, did you? I suppose we’d better treat her for mastitis now.”

“I didn’t have to cut it,” Teresa said. “Just keep an eye on her.”

“Ah.” The look he gave Teresa wasn’t warm, but it had thawed. Treating for mastitis meant the cow’s milk was unusable. She’d just saved him some bucks.

He, too, walked her out to the truck. “So you’re the new partner.”

“That’s right.” She unbuckled the rubber overalls and peeled them down.

“I suppose I’ll be seeing you again.”

“We’ll try to accommodate preferences,” she said evenly. “But that may not always be possible.”

He nodded, which could have meant anything from understanding to acquiescence. Teresa chose to take it as the latter. She’d done well.

Eric agreed when she got back to the hospital. “Two phone calls saying they liked you,” he informed her when she’d tracked him down to the kennel. Their resident cat, a huge fat tortoiseshell, sat slavishly at his feet. He was petting the still-groggy shepherd, who now had one floppy ear.

She crossed her arms. “And the two who wouldn’t let me in their barns?”

“One wants to know when I can come. The other says he’s changing services.”

“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” She stomped across the room, then swung around violently. “If they’d just give me a chance…”

Eric closed the cage door and rose to his feet, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “Ol’ Man Eide says he did only because he couldn’t wait. He sounded grudging, but he’s willing to concede you’re okay.”

“Eide? That was my last call.”

“Yup.”

“And he phoned you to praise me?”

“I think ‘okay’ is praise in his book.”

Teresa pumped her fist. “Yes!”

Eric slapped her on the back. “You’ll win ’em over.”

Already, she reflected as she unloaded the truck, it felt as if she and Eric had worked together forever. As if they were best friends. It was a good thing they didn’t stir each other’s hormones.

“HE’S HERE AGAIN,” Nicole said into the telephone to her best friend from Bellevue. “He didn’t even make an excuse for stopping by this time!”

“He?” Jayne echoed. “Oh. You mean that guy. The one your mom is seeing.”

“If she marries him, we’ll be stuck here forever!” Nicole said hopelessly.

“Hold on. My call waiting is beeping.”

While Nicole sat listening to silence, she brooded. Couldn’t Jayne tell how upset she was? Like some other phone call was so important.

Leaning against her bed, her door shut, she could still hear voices drifting up the stairs. Laughter. She felt…shut out. Even though she knew she wasn’t really. Mark was down there in the kitchen with them. But she didn’t belong.