Lennox went quiet for a moment.

“No,” he said finally. “I suppose not. I suppose . . . for the last few years . . .”

He paused again, and looked at the bright green hills rolling past the windshield.

“The last few years . . . have been difficult. And it’s as if . . . I don’t know if you’ll know what I mean, but it’s as if somehow being low has . . . it feels like it’s become rather a habit.”

He looked down at his kilt.

“But I’m out now, aren’t I?”

Nina looked at him playfully. “I don’t know. Are you going to hug the bar looking angry all night?”

“I don’t do that.”

“You did at the barn dance! You spent most of the night talking with that guy and totally ignoring everyone.”

Lennox sighed. “Oh aye, that night.”

“Oh aye, that night,” mimicked Nina. “You know, given all the social events that go on around here, I don’t know how anyone keeps up with the whirl of it all.”

Lennox narrowed his eyes and kept his focus on the road ahead.

“Aye, I remember.”

Nina looked at him, waiting for him to elaborate. Eventually he did so.

“That . . . that was my lawyer, Ranald,” he sighed. “He wanted to talk to me face-to-face.”

He tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Oh Lord. Sorry, Nina. I didn’t want to tell you yet . . . not until I knew for sure. I’ve been trying to fix it, but I don’t think I can. I’m sorry to have to tell you this, especially tonight, but I was . . . I mean, before. I was actually coming over to tell you . . .”

Nina looked at him. His face was pink.

“I . . . Kate wants the farm. Or she wants me to sell the farm.”

“What?” said Nina. She thought of the expensive lined curtains, the beautiful objects so carefully chosen, the care that had been taken on everything. Surely someone with such good taste, with such an eye for nice things, surely they wouldn’t march in and destroy everything?

She realized how selfish she was being. This was only where she was renting a space. It was absolutely nothing compared with what was going to happen to Lennox.

“Oh my God,” she said. “She can’t take your farm!”

“She’s trying,” said Lennox.

“But isn’t it a family farm?”

“Doesn’t really matter,” said Lennox. “I mean, she was my family. For a while.” He fell silent.

“But doesn’t she have a job?”

Lennox shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to matter.”

“Didn’t she leave you?”

“That neither.”

“What will you do if you don’t have a farm?”

Lennox blinked rapidly. “I don’t know,” he said slowly. “Start over, I suppose. Go and work on somebody else’s farm.”

Nina couldn’t see Lennox as a laborer somehow.

“That can’t happen,” she said fiercely. “I’ve seen how hard you work on your place.”

“Well, the lawyers don’t seem to think that matters.”

They bumped slowly up the rutted track, Nina aware that they were even less in the mood for a party than ever. But she had to ask.

“Why did you break up?” she asked quietly. “Did she really just fall for someone else, or was that an excuse?”

There was a very long silence in the car.

“Well, isn’t it obvious?” said Lennox.

“You’re a grumpy old sod?” said Nina.

“Uh no, that wasn’t what I was going to say at all,” said Lennox, clearly hurt.

“Oh. Um.”

There was another long pause.

“She felt buried away,” said Lennox. “Felt that I’d promised her something different, something more. No, that’s not it. I hadn’t. I hadn’t offered her anything. She knew what the deal was. And she thought that would be all right, that she’d be able to cope up here in the isolation. But she couldn’t.”

He looked out over the golden hills.

“The winters are very long here, you know,” he said. “It’s hard; it’s very hard to be a farmer’s wife. It’s not foreverybody.”

“How did you meet?” said Nina.

“I was at the agricultural college in Edinburgh . . . she was at the art school.” He smiled. “Should have realized, huh?”

Nina tilted her head. “So why did she agree to come out here? If she wanted to stay in town and be a cool artist?”

“She thought it would be good for her work. To give herself the solitude she needed to truly become a great painter.”

Nina thought of the contemplative canvas on the wall.

“Oh,” she said. “That’s hers! That picture! It never occurred to me.”

She thought again of the dark, gloomy layers, so at odds with the rest of the room.

“Oh yes,” said Lennox. “She didn’t want to hang it. I did it. I thought . . . I thought it would cheer her up.”

“Did it?”

“Not really. But I did think it was beautiful.”

“It is,” said Nina fervently. “It’s really beautiful. But why . . . why would she want to take your farm away from you, just because she hated it?”

“I think she’s really hard up,” said Lennox. “It’s expensive for artists, trying to make it in the city. It’s pricey down there. And I think she’s been teaching a little bit, which . . . I can’t imagine she enjoys that in the slightest. Not really her type of thing. And she says it’s for my benefit, that I need to get out of the rut she thinks I’m in, stop working so hard, take on a more relaxing job.”

“She might have a point about that.”

Lennox looked at her. “Do you really think that?”

“I hear you up at all hours,” said Nina. “I see you striding for miles around the hills.”

Lennox’s brow creased in confusion. “But that’s what I do,” he said. “It’s not work, it’s a way of life. My way of life. I know she didn’t like it, but that’s not really my problem. I like it. I couldn’t . . . Man, I just couldn’t be in an office all day. Doing things on the computer. That would be torture for me. I’m not an artist like she is, and I’m not clever like you, finding something the community needs and bringing it in. I can’t do that at all.”