Page 11

At the door Stephanie kissed his cheek and held his face and said, “She’s a lovely girl,” and he said, “She is,” and she said, “Well,” and he said, “Knox thinks so too,” and she said, “Knox,” in a voice that had already moved on to the next niece, and let him go.

The kitchen light was on.

He’d known it would be from the cattle guard. He came up the drive at nine-thirty. The yard dark, the porch dark, the old man’s window dark, because John was in bed at nine and always had been. One light, over the sink. A shape at the counter that stood up when the truck came in, and sat back down.

He came in the back. She had the crossword out of the Midland paper folded to a quarter, a pen in her hand, her feet up on the other chair. She’d changed out of the day into the T-shirt, with a pair of shorts under it this time, and her legs were bare to the top of the thigh and up on his father’s chair. He looked, because he wasn’t dead. She saw him look.

“How was the schoolteacher?” She asked, to the crossword.

“Who told you.”

“Remi. At supper. Also Lara, and Levi, who said you’d gone to eat with a lady, and your father, who said nothing so loudly the dog left the room.”

“She was nice.”

“Good.”

“Second grade. Odessa. Had a paint horse.”

“That’s lovely.”

“She’s going to marry Knox.”

The pen stopped.

“They talked about a gelding for forty minutes,” he said, and got a glass down, and filled it at the faucet, and leaned on the counter across the room from her, which was as far as the room went. “Stephanie’s already moved on. I’ve been introduced to four women since Easter. I think I’m done.”

“You think.”

“I’m done.”

“Then that’s your business,” she said, and wrote a word in, and he watched her do it, and she was writing it more carefully than a crossword took.

She’d come here to get away from people. She’d said it Monday, in this kitchen, over a can of beans, and heard herself say it, and he’d let it go by. It was still going by, three days on. Every time her phone lit up on the counter she turned it over without a look. Every time a truck came up the drive her shoulders went up, the way they’d gone up at the sound of his. He’d talked his way through rooms for a living and he’d read this one. Somebody had done something to this woman, or was still doing it. She’d driven two days to put a state line between her and it. And she’d walked into a house with five men in it and decided the only one she’d be rude to was him.

He didn’t ask. He drank his water and looked at her legs and didn’t ask. A man who asked got the answer he’d earned, and he hadn’t earned one. And she’d have lied, and he’d have known it, and then they’d both have had to live in the kitchen with that.

“Seven letters,” she said. “‘Talks too much.’”

He put the glass down.

“That’s not in a crossword.”

“No.” She looked up at him, finally, and it wasn’t kind, and it wasn’t unkind. “I made it up. It’s late, Brody. Go to bed.”

“You first.”

“I’m still doing my crossword.”

“You’ve had that crossword since I came in.”

“It’s a hard crossword.” She looked back down at the paper. “Go on. You’re in my light.”

He went. Past her to the hall, close, not touching, the way he’d gone past her the first night. She didn’t move her feet. His leg brushed her bare ankle going by and neither of them did one thing about it. He got to the stairs and stopped with his hand on the newel post and stood there a second in the dark over one ankle. Then he went up.

His room was down the hall. Her door was twenty feet from it with the light off under it. He lay in his bed in his father’s house with his boots on the floor and the window open and the letter on the dresser, and heard her come up at eleven, and her door shut. He lay there and listened to a woman not be interested in him through two walls, and thought about that a good deal longer than the facts warranted.

CHAPTER THREE