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Nobody in the yard moved. The windmill turned. Behind her in the hall Levi had stopped breathing, and she knew without turning around that Giana had a hand over his mouth.

“That’s all,” the man said, to Brody now, because Brody was the one with the rifle, in the reasonable voice, the one she’d heard down a phone eleven times. “I’m done. That’s all I’ve got to say.”

“You done?” Brody said.

“I’m done.”

“All right,” Brody said, and lifted the rifle to his shoulder, and put it on the man’s chest, and pulled the trigger.

The chamber clicked.

It was a small sound. In the whole of that yard with the wind going and the windmill and a dozen people not breathing, it was the smallest sound she’d ever heard, and Tom Matthews’ knees went out from under him and he went down in John Royston’s yard in his good jacket on both knees in the dust with a noise coming out of him she’d never heard a man make.

He cried. On his knees. With his hands on the ground in front of him and his head down, and it went on. Nobody went to him. Nobody said anything. Brody stood there with the rifle down by his leg again and his face doing nothing at all, and waited.

When it stopped, the man looked up. Not at Brody. At the porch. At her.

“I hate you,” he said.

Quiet. The way he’d said everything.

“I hate you. I hope you know that. I hope you—” and he got up, in stages, with dust on both knees, and he didn’t finish it. He got in the car. He sat there a moment with his hands on the wheel, and she watched him try to get his face back, and not manage it, and start the engine anyway.

He turned the car around in the yard. He drove out slow, over the cattle guard, and at the county road a cruiser that had been sitting under a mesquite with its lights off pulled out behind him, and Tate Malone lifted one hand out the window at the house without looking at it, and followed the rental north at a distance of about four feet.

Nobody moved for a while.

Then Chase said, “Well, shit,” and Jett laughed, once, the way you laugh when you’ve been holding your breath. Remi came off the barn wall and across the yard fast. She hit Brody in the chest with the flat of her hand, enough to move him, said, “You son of a bitch,” and put her arms around him, and he stood there with the rifle and let her.

Dean hadn’t moved. He stood where he’d stood the whole time, looking at the cattle guard. Then he turned around and looked up at the porch, past Sunny, at his wife. Lara let go of Sunny’s hand and went down the steps to him, slow, with her hand on her middle. He met her at the bottom, put his hand on the back of her neck and his forehead on hers, and stood there.

Jace’s truck came over the cattle guard. He’d missed it by two minutes. He got out and looked at the yard and said, “Did I—” and Chase said, “You did,” and Jace said, “God damn it,” and sat down on his own tailgate.

Behind her, the old man moved.

He came out of the doorway past her, down the steps, across the yard, past Dean and Lara, and stopped in front of his second son, and looked at him. Remi let go. Brody stood there with the rifle in his hand and his father in front of him and didn’t look away.

John held his hand out.

Brody put the rifle in it. John worked the bolt, once, and looked at the empty chamber, and closed it, and looked at the shirt pocket with the four shells in it, and then at his son’s face, for a long time, in front of everybody.

“You don’t point an empty gun at a man in my yard,” he said. “You point a loaded one or you don’t point one. That was your mother’s rule, not mine, and I never once saw her break it.”

“No, sir.”

“Don’t ever do that again.”

“No, sir.”

John looked at him a moment longer. Then he turned around with the rifle and went back across the yard and up the steps, past Sunny, into his house, and she heard the hall closet open, and shut.

She stayed on the porch.

The yard emptied by inches. Chase and Jett went around the barn to do something with a truck that didn’t need doing. Jace and Dean stood by the tailgate a long while and didn’t say much. Lara went in, because Giana had come to the screen and said, “Mom,” in a voice that needed her, and Remi went in after her, and Sunny heard the kitchen start up behind her, the faucet, a pan, Remi telling Levi something in a loud cheerful voice that wasn’t the truth.

Brody came up the steps.

He stood in front of her at the rail. He’d gotten the shells out of his pocket and he was holding them in his hand, the four he’d stood on the table at five that morning, and he looked at her and didn’t touch her.