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“Brody —”

“You said nobody. In that voice.” He didn’t stop. “Say it again. Say it now, so I know what it sounds like when it’s true.”

“Nobody,” she said, with her back off the bed. “Nobody. Nobody but you, there’s nobody but you, there’s never —” and she went, all at once, with his name in it, and he went after her with his teeth in her shoulder and the quiet name, and lay there on her with the whole of his weight, and she let him, and held his head.

“That’s the voice,” he said, after a while. “That one.”

“That’s the only one I’ve got left. You’ve had the others.” She turned her face into his hair. “Are you still angry.”

“Yes.”

“Good,” she said. “Stay angry. It’s better than soup.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

It was five in the morning and she was still in his bed.

She’d never once stayed till five. Two months of going back down the hall at one with her shoes in her hand, and now the house was waking up under her, the old man’s door, the faucet, Dean’s boots on the stairs, and she had a man’s arm over her and his mouth on the back of her neck.

“You stayed,” he said.

“I fell asleep.”

“You fell asleep in my bed and it’s five. That’s staying.” She felt him behind her, awake, and pushed back against him because she couldn’t help it, and he made a sound into her shoulder. “Don’t do that. I’ve got to go down, and if you do that once more I’m not going anywhere for an hour.”

She turned over and kissed him anyway, slow, till she felt him give up on going down. Then she took her mouth off him and got out of the bed.

“That’s cruel.”

“That’s five o’clock.” She found her T-shirt. “He’s coming today, and when he does I’m not standing on that porch in a T-shirt.”

“Today,” he said, and sat up. “A man like that doesn’t wait out a weekend in a motel that’s lost his booking. Put the coffee on. I’ll come down and do a thing you’re not going to like.”

The thing was the rifle.

He came down at five-ten with his shirt open and sat at the table where his father sat. He took the rifle from beside the door and worked the bolt, and the shells came out one at a time onto the table. Four. He stood them up in a row on the wood and looked at them. Then he put them in his shirt pocket, one at a time, and buttoned it.

She stood at the stove with the pot in her hand.

“Why?”

“Levi.”

“Levi’s seven and he’s been told.”

“Levi’s seven and he’s been told, and he’s a boy, and it’s a gun by a door.” He put the rifle back where it had been, leaning. “That’s the reason I’ll give if I’m asked. It’s a true one.”

“What’s the other one?”

He looked at her from the door. He did the buttons on his shirt, one at a time, the top one, the pocket with the shells in it, and didn’t answer. She poured his coffee and put it on the table and didn’t ask again, because the old man’s feet were on the stairs.

John came in. He looked at the rifle by the door. He looked at his son sitting in his chair, and Brody got up out of it without a word and went around to his own, and the old man sat down and picked up his coffee.

“Morning.”

“Morning.”

“Morning, sir.”