The seasons turned, and the farm next door greened further and further. Jonathan attempted to help Spark with the harvest when autumn came, but she refused. "Good gods, you have ten times the work at harvest that I do! Go, take care of yourself. I'm just fine."

He did, however, find time to help with a few repairs when the snow started falling. The roof of the farmhouse was creaking dangerously under a relatively light load of snow, and they spent nearly a week reinforcing it. Walls needed patching, cracks needed chinking, but eventually the house and barns were ready for winter.

They went to a few of the various winter social events, at Spark's insistence. Jonathan still hadn't really wanted to go, but with her right there inviting him, he didn't know how to say no. He mostly had fun, but he kept seeing Ariana, remembering the winter she'd returned to the farm, how glad he'd been to see her, how much fun they'd had at the parties that year.

"Jonathan, I can tell your mind is a mile away, at least," said Spark as they drove home from one such event. They were using his cart, but her magnificent horse pulled it.

"I guess."

"Care to tell me where?" she said.

He shrugged. "Just... remembering a girl."

"Ah. I thought it might be something like that."

"I thought maybe she loved me. And then I was sure she didn't. And now I don't know at all. But it doesn't matter. I drove her away and she won't be coming back."

Her hands were on the reins, but she held them in just one, and put her other hand over his. "You never know, she might."

"No, I don't think she will," he said. "She didn't belong here anyhow."

"Is that why you drove her away, because she didn't belong?"

"I guess," he said sadly.

Spark shook her head. "Why do you get to decide where somebody else belongs? What if she thought she did belong here?"

"I don't think she could have."

Spark pulled the cart to a stop. "I don't think you get to make up somebody else's mind for them, Jonathan, nor tell them how they have to think. Nobody gets to do that for another."

"I...."

"Sorry," she said, and shook the reins again. The cart started forward. "It's none of my business, and I'll keep it that way. I just think it sounds like you were doing all the deciding, and that never works well. When you're talking about love, you have to let the other person decide too. I'd wager she left more because of that than because of any nonsense about where she 'belonged.'"

"You belong here though," said Jonathan.

Spark laughed. "And how do you know that?"

"You just do. You love the land, like I do."

"And is that what it takes to belong, loving the land?"

"I guess so."

"It hasn't got anything to do with where you came from or what you used to do? You don't know anything about my past. I could be anybody."

He blinked. "I guess I don't. But it's clear enough to me that you're from farming stock."

She laughed again. "Believe that if you want to, Jonathan. I won't tell you otherwise."

"Well then, where do you come from?"

"I just said I wasn't going to tell you. I'm not."

He gaped at her. "But why?"

"Because I'm contrary. If you want to believe that the only way I could love the land is to be raised a farm girl, you believe that. It's your head. I don't tell people what they should think, remember? But if you'll actually use that brain, which I know is in your head somewhere, and start doing some thinking, you'd know where I come from."

He sat there blinking in silence for the rest of the drive home.

As he lay in bed that night he kept turning that over in his mind. If she wouldn't tell him where she came from, how was he supposed to know? And then suddenly he remembered that first day, seeing her driving up, and how he'd been surprised to see her pull into the farm next door, and not just because it was empty, because... Because a person with a horse like that wasn't a farmer. She said it was an inheritance. That means she got it from her family. And no farming family has a horse like that! So she's not a farm girl.

He was tired, and he started dozing off, but that idea kept running through his mind, and the last thing he thought before he fell asleep was, if Spark, who isn't a farm girl, could really love the land, then why couldn't Ariana love it too?