With his wife, son, and twin daughters in tow, Steiner pulls up to the family's summer place — a ranch house far from the silicon chip firm he runs on the coast. It's a solemn homecoming: Steiner and his wife are bringing their nine-year-old son, James, back from the hospital, where he spent two weeks recovering from a brutal set of kicks from a horse. In addition to four broken ribs, James sustained a head injury that landed him in a four-day coma. He'll now have to undergo intense physical therapy to regain basic bodily functions, as well as the ability to speak. As he guides James out of the car, Steiner thinks back on what could have been their last moment together: Steiner lies on the floor of the twins' room, napping after two beers—though he had promised his son he wouldn't drink that summer, since alcohol made him "unpredictable." Earlier that day, Steiner and James spent several unsuccessful hours trying to start a tractor. Waking his father from his nap, James asks Steiner if he needs more help with the tractor; otherwise, the boy says he intends to go horse riding with his sisters at the neighbor's ranch. "I don't care," Steiner recalls responding to his son. He senses that James kept "at a distance", likely intuiting that Steiner was "angry at the tractor" and "short-tempered after the beer." (Steiner also guiltily recounts how his son would often approach him and say, "Dad, I forgive you"—even before he himself "realized he'd been harsh or unfair.") Steiner recounts the next sequence of events: Soon after his son left to go riding, he gets a call from the neighbor, who informs him that one of the horses knocked his son unconscious. Steiner races to the hospital, where he becomes the picture of fatherly devotion. His wife had recently accused him of working too much and spending too little time with the children, but the dynamic is transformed now: Steiner doesn't leave the hospital until his son is discharged two weeks later. Upon returning home, Steiner watches his still speechless son stumble towards and pat their horses. He thinks about his son's recovery is entirely internal to him: he and his wife are merely "silent passengers" on the journey. The wind lifts the family's hair, and Steiner revisits this image of "all of them suspended for a second against the horizon, silent in the wind"—even after James fully recovers and life returns to normal.