He kisses the top of my head and walks out to the porch with Holt to make a phone call.
Marlena pours me a fresh coffee around three and squeezes my shoulder when she sets it down.
* * *
Around six o'clock the dogs at the kennel start barking.
Spur's head comes up first. Then Pops'. Then Uncle Holt's.
A truck is pulling into the gravel drive at the front of the property—a black F-350 with a Lubbock license plate. Two more trucks behind it.
Holt stands up from the kitchen table. "Roan's here."
Pops walks to the front porch and Uncle Holt walks behind him.
Spur stays at the kitchen table for a half-second looking at me. "You comin', baby?"
"Yeah, Spur. I'm coming."
He holds his hand out and I take it, and we walk through the kitchen and out the front door to the porch where my father and my uncle are already standing in the late-evening sun.
The black F-350 stops in the gravel.
The driver's door opens and my Uncle Roan steps out.
He is the youngest of the Lyle brothers—thirty-eight now, dark hair the same as Pops and Uncle Holt, blue eyes, three days of a beard, a cut with the Lubbock rocker, dust on his boots from the road.
Two of his men get out of the back seat.
He looks at the porch, sees Pops first, then Uncle Holt, and me.
He crosses the gravel in long strides and stops at the bottom of the porch steps. "Brother," he says to Pops.
"Brother," Pops answers.
"Brother," Roan says to Uncle Holt.
"Brother," Uncle Holt answers.
Roan's eyes find me. "Hey there, kiddo."
"Uncle Roan."
He comes up the porch steps two at a time and pulls me into his chest, hard, both arms, the same hug Uncle Holt gave me in the parking lot of the Hampton in Abilene yesterday.
Cedar soap and the road and a man who has driven six hours in a truck to be here for me.
"I'm sorry, baby girl," he says into my hair.
"For what?"
"For bringing him to this family in the first place."
I hold onto him. "It's not your fault, Uncle Roan."
"I know it isn't, Dakota. But I'm sorry anyway."
He pulls back, kisses my forehead, and looks at Pops over my head.
