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John drank. He looked at the window, where it was still dark, then at Brody’s shirt pocket, and Sunny saw him see the shape of it. He didn’t say anything at all. He drank his coffee, said, “Eggs,” and she made him eggs.

Nobody said they were waiting.

Chase came up at seven with no reason and sat on the porch. Jett came at eight, stood in the yard with his hands in his pockets looking at the cattle guard for a while, then came in and ate. Dean didn’t go to the pens, which he’d gone to every Saturday of his life. He sat at the table with a coffee going cold and a newspaper he wasn’t reading, and Lara sat across from him with her feet up and her hand on her middle and watched him not read it.

“Go do something,” she said.

“I’m doing something.”

“You’re sitting at a table.”

“That’s what I’m doing.” He turned a page. “Giana. Take your brother up and find that book you lost.”

“I didn’t lose a book.”

“Then find one you haven’t lost,” Dean said, and Giana looked at her father, and at her mother, and at Sunny, who was at the stove for the third time that morning with nothing to cook, and took Levi upstairs without another word, which Giana had never done in her life.

Sunny made a pie. She didn’t want a pie. She made it because her hands needed a job and a pie took an hour and a half, and she stood at the counter rolling it out where she could see the cattle guard through the window, and behind her the whole house sat in a kitchen pretending it was a Saturday.

Remi came in at ten.

“He’s out of the motel. Checked out or thrown out, Earl’s not sure which and he’s enjoying it.” She got a coffee. “Harvey’s shut. Pearl’s shut, with a sign in the window that says GONE FISHING, and Pearl’s never fished in her life. Liv ran him off the Bateman gate at nine-thirty and asked would he like to buy a bull.” Remi drank. “He’s headed north. Toward here. Jace called everybody. Tate’s on the county road somewhere with his lights off, eating a sandwich, having the best day of his life.”

Nobody said anything.

“So that’s where we are,” Remi said. “I’m going to go stand in the yard.”

He came at two-forty.

She saw the car first, because she’d been seeing it in the window all day and now it was there, gray, slow, over the cattle guard with the dust behind it, and she put the dish towel down on the counter, and folded it, and went out onto the porch.

They were already there. She hadn’t heard them go out. Dean was in the yard, in front of the porch steps, between the car and the house, with his hat on and his hands loose. He didn’t look big. He didn’t look angry. He was a man in his own yard in front of the house his children were in. Chase was ten feet to his left. Jett was ten feet to his right. Remi was by the barn with her arms folded. The old man was in the doorway behind Sunny, with the screen door open and his shoulder against the frame, and Giana and Levi were behind him in the hall where she’d put them, and she could hear Levi breathing.

Lara came out. Sunny said, “Go in,” and Lara said, “No,” and came and stood behind her at the rail, with one hand on her middle, and the other one came along the rail and found Sunny’s and held it.

Brody wasn’t there.

She looked for him. She looked at the yard, the barn, the truck, and he wasn’t in any of it. The car stopped in the yard thirty feet from Dean. The engine went off. The door opened, and Tom Matthews got out.

Good jacket. He’d had his hair cut. He shut the door of the rental and stood beside it with his hands where everybody could see them, open, at his sides, and he looked at the yard full of Roystons, and at the porch, and found her, and smiled.

“Sunny.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Hey. It’s me.” He came one step forward, and Dean didn’t move, and he stopped. “I’m not going to come any closer, all right, I can see how this looks. Five men in a yard. I get it. I’m one guy in a rental car, I’m not anything, I’m not here to be anything.” He looked past Dean at her. “Sunny. I just want to talk to you. That’s all. That’s the whole thing. Five minutes.”

Lara’s hand tightened.

“You left.” His voice went soft. He was good at it; he’d been good at it in a coffee shop. “You just left. No note, no call, you didn’t say goodbye, you just packed a car in the night and drove off and I didn’t know if you were alive. Do you know what that’s like? Four months I’ve been worried sick. And I get down here, I drive two days, and a woman in a diner tells me she’s never heard of you, and a man shuts a bar in my face, and I’m standing in a yard with your, what, your new friends, and nobody will even let me say your name.” He spread his hands. “That’s not fair. Is it? On me? I never did one thing to you, Sunny. Not one. I sent flowers. I’m a man who sends flowers. And you’ve got these people looking at me like I’m⁠—”

The barn door opened.

Brody came out of it with the rifle. He didn’t hurry. He came across the yard from the barn at the pace he’d have walked to the faucet, with the rifle in one hand down by his leg, and he went past Remi, and past Chase, and he stopped beside Dean, a foot off him, and stood there, and let the man finish.

The man had stopped. He looked at the rifle, and at Brody, and back at the porch, and he found his voice again, and it had a crack in it now that hadn’t been there before.

“Sunny. Come on. Tell them. Tell them I never did anything. Tell them I’m not—” He laughed, a little, and it was wet. “This is crazy. I’m a guy who took you to dinner. Twice. I just want five minutes, and then I’ll go, I swear to God, I’ll get in the car and go and you’ll never hear from me, I just want to hear you say it. That’s all. I just want to hear you say it to my face.”