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“It’s six in the morning.”

“It’s hot at six in the morning, Levi, it’s July. Eat your eggs.”

“It’s not hot till —”

“It’s hot at six in July, baby, eat your eggs,” Lara said, and looked down the table at Brody with the dimple on, and Brody looked at his plate, because his own face wasn’t doing anything he could vouch for either.

Seven hours since the porch. He’d lain in his bed with his mouth still tasting of her and not slept one minute, and now it was breakfast, and she was at the stove with her face red and he was at the table with his coffee, and neither of them had looked at the other one once.

It was going to be a long day. It was going to be a long August.

“Brody,” John said.

He looked up. The old man had gone around the table and stopped at him, second time in a month, and Brody had no idea what his face was doing.

“That blue truck.”

“Alternator. Chase towed it in at six. I’ll get one from Earl’s tomorrow and have it back on the road Sunday.”

“Earl’s got one?”

“Earl’s got everything, he just doesn’t know where.”

“I’m going to town tomorrow,” Sunny said, to the pan. “For the shop.”

Nobody said anything for a second. Then Chase, who’d never in his life said a thing at a table that wasn’t about cattle, said, “Take her, then,” to Brody, and went back to his eggs, and Remi put her fork down and looked at Chase with something close to respect.

“I’ve got my own car,” Sunny said.

“It’s a long way for two trucks,” Chase said. “Gas is gas.”

“Chase.”

“I’m saving the old man money.”

“I’ll drive her,” Brody said, and Sunny turned around from the stove with the spatula in her hand and looked at him, straight, for the first time since the porch, and her face was red, and so was his, and Levi said, “See,” and Lara laughed so hard she had to hold the front of her.

She didn’t say a word for the twenty minutes to town.

He’d have paid to know what she was thinking. He’d have paid double to know what to say, and he was a man who’d never once in his life had to look for a thing to say, and he drove with both hands on the wheel and the county going by and didn’t find one. She sat with her bag in her lap and Helen’s list on top of the bag and looked out her window at fence posts, and every one of those fence posts got more attention than he did.

At the cattle guard he said, “Sunny.”

“Don’t.”

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You were going to. I could hear you winding up.” She didn’t look around. “Drive, Brody.”

He drove.

Earl’s had the alternator. Earl’s had it on a shelf behind the wormer under a box of fence staples that had been on top of it since the first Bush, and Earl found it in four minutes, which for Earl was a personal best, and rang it up, and looked past Brody out the window at the blue truck’s driver in the lot, who was Sunny, standing by the tailgate with her arms folded looking at the feed store like it had done something to her.

“That’s the housekeeper,” Earl said.

“Yep.”

“She drive in with you?”