Page 71

“I haven’t said anything.”

“You were going to.” She got up. She found the shoes. “Go to sleep, Brody.”

She went down the hall at eleven-twenty. She’d never once gone before one, and he lay there and listened to her door, and it didn’t shut the way it usually did, quiet, with the hand on it. It shut the way a door shuts when somebody’s got their back to it.

“What did you do?” Remi said, on Wednesday, at the faucet.

“Nothing.”

“Then what did she do?”

“Nothing.” He filled the bucket. “She’s had a man kneel in the yard. She’s had a week. Leave her be.”

“I’ve been leaving her be. I’ve been leaving her be since Sunday, and she made a pie on Monday nobody asked for, and a pie on Tuesday, and she’s got a look on her at the stove I’ve only ever seen on Dad, in February, the week he wouldn’t say your name.” Remi turned the faucet off for him. “That’s not a week. That’s a woman packing something.”

“She keeps a bag packed. She told me. It’s on the closet floor unzipped and she’s never put a thing in a drawer in this house.”

“Then it’s not the bag I’m worried about,” Remi said, and went to find her horse.

Thursday supper was loud, because Thursday supper was always loud. Levi had the second lizard in a jar on the table and was being told to take it off, by everybody, in turn, and not taking it off. Chase and Remi were three minutes into an argument about whose truck had the better brakes that had started in 2019 and never once found a winner. Jett was telling Giana something about a hawk that Giana was pretending not to listen to with a book open beside her plate, and the old man was eating through all of it the way he ate through weather.

“Sunny,” Lara said, into a gap. “I’ve been thinking about December, if you’d get the chart out after and we could look at⁠—”

“Ask me next week,” Sunny said, to the pan.

The table didn’t stop. Levi’s lizard was still on it. But Lara stopped, with her fork up, and looked down the length of the noise at Brody, and he looked at his plate, and the old man looked at both of them and said, “Potatoes,” and Levi passed the potatoes, and the lizard went with them.

“Levi,” said four people.

“He likes potatoes,” Levi said.

He went out to the porch after the dishes and she didn’t come out to it. He stood there with the yard in front of him. The marks in the dust were gone, because Chase had walked over them on Sunday on purpose, with his hat off, and said, “There,” and gone home.

Friday night she washed and he dried, because Remi had gone to Lubbock and somebody had to, and they stood at the sink with the faucet going and the house behind them and didn’t say anything for six plates.

“You’ve missed a spot,” he said, on the sixth.

“I haven’t missed a spot.”

“There. On the rim. Helen’s dog would’ve had that.” He held it up to the light. “I’m only saying. Standards have slipped in this house since October and I don’t like to name names.”

She took the plate from him, looked at it, and put it back in the water. She didn’t laugh. She’d have laughed in September. He dried the next one slower than it needed.

“Are you going to tell me,” he said, to the seventh.

“Saturday.”

“That’s what I said to you. At the cattle guard. You’ve got till Saturday.”

“I know what you said.” She handed him the plate. “It’s a good line. I’m borrowing it.”

Saturday she came at eleven and shut the door, and she stood against it.

He was on the bed with the lamp on. He’d been there an hour, not reading, the way he’d been the night before Odessa, and he looked at her standing against the door with her shoes in her hand and her face doing nothing at all, on purpose, and he’d have said something smart on any other night, and he didn’t.

“Sit down,” he said.

“I’ll stand.”