Grace looks at me. "You let her in this morning."
"A little."
"Good."
We sit some more. The tea in my hand goes from too hot to drinkable to cold.
Spur is on the tailgate of his Ford across the yard. He hasn't moved in forty minutes.
Grace, eventually, "You're not doing this alone, Kota."
"I know."
"Do you?"
I don't answer.
I think about the note in my pocket.
I think about Pops's face in the kitchen and Spur's face in the round pen and the wayeverybrother who walked off the church porch tonight clocked me on his way past.
I don't answer, but I lean my head against Grace's shoulder.
She doesn't say anything. She just rests her cheek on the top of my head and breathes.
After a bit, Spur and I head back. The path takes us past the bunkhouse.
Buckley is on the porch.
Buckley and a prospect I don't know by name—older than him, mid-twenties, maybe. Sharp-faced. Both with beers. Both watching us walk up the path.
Spur stops at the foot of the porch steps.
He doesn't speak. He looks at Buckley.
Justlooksat him.
I have never seen Spur make a man go through stages of regret in real time.
It happens so fast.
Buckley's beer pauses halfway to his mouth, and his face does a slow drain from cocky to confused to scared, and I don't know what passed between them earlier that I missed, but Spur is collecting on it now without saying a word.
The other prospect looks between them. "What?"
"Nothing," Buckley says. Soft.
Spur looks at Buckley a second longer, then he turns to me and tips his head toward the path to my cabin.
We walk.
When we're past the bunkhouse I ask, "What was that?"
"Nothing."
"Spur."
"He's not going to talk to you again."
