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“I’ve behaved for two and a half months. I’ve been a saint. Earl’s got money on it.”

She laughed into his shirt. She couldn’t help it. She stood in the middle of his father’s yard with her face in a man’s shoulder, laughing where a hundred and twenty people could see, with his hand on her back, and his thumb. She was wet, on a dance floor, from his thumb. She’d have killed anybody who said so. He knew, because he moved his thumb again.

“Stop that.”

“Stop what?”

“You know what.”

“I’ve got four minutes,” he said. “I’m using them.”

The song ended. He didn’t let go for a second. Then he did, stepped back, put his hat on, and she stood there with her hands empty in the middle of the floor and the county looking at her. The paper’s boy stepped up with the camera down and a notebook out.

“Ma’am. For the caption. Your name?”

She looked at him. Twenty. Freckles. A boy with a notebook in a yard in Texas.

“Sunny Tyler,” she said. “T-Y-L-E-R.”

He wrote it down. She’d given a stranger with a notebook her name and spelled it for him, in a yard, without thinking, and she hadn’t done that since Indianapolis, and Brody was looking at her from the edge of the floor because he’d watched her do it. She didn’t think about it. Pearl was coming across the yard toward her with her arms out.

Harvey’s was full by ten.

Half the yard had moved to it, the half without children. Harvey was pouring with both hands and saying nothing. There was a booth at the back with Dean in it, Jace, Mason, Aiden Kane, the four of them with their hats off and their elbows on the table, laughing at something that had happened in a truck in 2008. Sunny was at the bar between Lauren and Elena with a whiskey she hadn’t ordered. Brody was at her shoulder, not touching her, because they were in Harvey’s, and Harvey’s was the whole county in one room.

“They’ve been at that story an hour,” Lauren said. “It’s got a goat in it. Every time Aiden tells it there’s another goat.”

“Who’s Aiden?”

“Aiden Kane. Kane place, north of Dean’s. He’s been gone a long while.” Lauren drank. “Mason cried when he walked in. Mason’ll deny it.”

Remi came in at ten-thirty.

She came in the way Remi came into every room, which was through the door already talking, to Chase, over her shoulder, something about a horse, with her hat on, her hair down, a ring of dust on her from the yard. She got three steps in. She looked at the bar, at Sunny, lifted her chin. Then she looked at the booth at the back, and Sunny saw her see it.

Remi stopped talking.

She didn’t stop walking. She came on to the bar, stood beside Elena, said, “Beer,” to Harvey. Harvey gave her one. She held it without drinking it and looked at the mirror behind the bottles, where the booth was, backwards.

“Remi,” Chase said, behind her.

“What?”

“You were saying about the horse.”

“It’s fine. The horse is fine.” Remi drank. “Forget the horse.”

Sunny looked at Brody. He was looking at his sister. He wasn’t looking at the booth and he wasn’t looking at the mirror, he was looking at Remi the way he looked at a well chart, and Sunny watched him read his sister and not say one word of what he’d read.

“What’s wrong with Remi,” Chase said, to nobody, and Elena said, “Nothing’s wrong with Remi,” in the voice that meant shut up, and Chase shut up.

Remi finished the beer. It took her about four minutes. She put the bottle down and said, “I’m going home.” Lauren said, “It’s not eleven.” Remi said, “I’ve got a horse,” and went out the way she’d come in, without looking at the back of the room. The door swung. The booth laughed about the goat, and Aiden Kane didn’t look up.

Brody put his glass down.

“I’ll be a minute.”

“Brody —”