"He say yes?"
"He said yes."
Holt laughs again, quieter this time. "Of course he did. He's been watching her watch you for years." He goes quiet for a beat, then comes back lower. "You call me when she says yes too. I want to be the second man you call after her father."
"You got it."
"And Spur?"
"Yeah?"
"Welcome to the family, son."
"Thank you, brother."
I hang up. The road in front of me has gone hot and shimmering with the late-morning sun. The Llano River a few miles ahead.
Banshee takes a long pull off his coffee, sets the cup back in the cup holder between us.
"Brother."
"Yeah?"
"I'm proud of you."
I don't answer right away because if I do I might get emotional, and Banshee is going to ride me about it for the next decade.
At least I’m man enough to own my emotions.
He sees the line on my face and laughs and bumps his fist against my shoulder.
The rest of the drive into Llano, I think about my grandmother.
I think about the day she gave me the ring in a cedar box six months before she died, and the way her hands shook when she set it in mine.
I think about her sitting on the porch of her own ranch in San Saba telling me a man knows when he's found the woman he's going to give it to.
I was younger than I am now, and Dakota wasn't but a young woman, and I drove home from my grandmother's that afternoon knowing I'd found her years too early.
I pull into a metered spot on Main Street in Llano and shake Banshee out of the nap he fell into ten miles back.
Whitley's shop is on the corner of Main and Fifth in Llano in a building that's been there since the 1890s.
The bell over the door rings when we come in. Whitley is at the back counter with a magnifying loupe up to one eye. He's eighty-three years old, and he has been doing fine jewelry in Llano County since he was seventeen.
He looks up when he sees me. His face does the thing old men's faces do when they see a man whose grandmother they loved.
"Spur," he says.
"Mr. Whitley."
"Son. It's been too long."
"Yes, sir."
He nods at Banshee over my shoulder. Banshee nods back and hangs at the front of the shop with his hands in his pockets.
I set the cedar box on the counter and open it.
