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She poured it. She put the pot back on the burner and went back to the eggs, and behind her the table went on eating with the care of nine people who’d all decided at the same moment not to look at anything.

She’d been at the stove since five, the morning after she’d told him, with her chin level and her hair up and a look on her she’d have been proud of in a press room. Every one of them had come down and got a good morning and given one back. She’d said his name once, pouring, the way she’d say Chase’s, and her hand hadn’t shaken, and she was going to get through this breakfast if it killed her.

"Sunny," Levi said. "Uncle Brody's not going to Odessa again, is he?"

"No."

"Because he looks grumpy like when he got back from there."

"Levi." That was Dean.

"He does, though."

"Eat your eggs, Levi," Sunny said, and Brody said, "The boy's right, I'm grumpy like Odessa," in a perfectly ordinary voice, and reached for the biscuits, and Remi put her cup down very carefully and looked at the ceiling.

"Coffee's better here, though." It was her coffee he meant, and she was four feet off at the stove, and he didn't look at her when he said it. He said it to the biscuit.

She stood at the stove and turned the bacon.

The old man ate. He ate the way he’d eaten through every bad morning that house had ever had, steadily, with his hat on the table, and when he’d finished he pushed the plate an inch and looked down the table at his second son.

“You’re staying, then.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Helen’s back the Monday after Thanksgiving. Sunny’s going the Tuesday.” John said it plainly, to the table, and Lara’s fork stopped, and Giana looked up from her book, and Sunny stood at the stove with the tongs and kept turning bacon that didn’t need it. “That’s what she’s told me and I’ve said thank you for the notice. I’m saying it so nobody in this house has to whisper it. There. It’s said.” He picked up his coffee. “And you’re staying.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Uh huh,” John said, and drank, and that was all.

She fed them. She cleared. She washed, and Remi dried without being asked and without saying a word, which in Remi was a form of shouting. When the kitchen was empty and the house had gone out to the pens and the church and the barn, she went upstairs and turned the shower on as hot as it went, and stood in it, and cried, because the pipes in that house were seventy years old and loud, and it was the only place in it nobody could hear her.

“Two pies. Pecan and the apple.” Pearl wrote it down without looking at the pad. “For the Thursday.”

“For whenever it happens. Lara says Thursday. Lara’s said Thursday since August, so I’ve stopped listening to Lara.”

“Thursday.” Pearl looked at her over the register. It was Monday morning and the breakfast crowd had gone and Marge was in the back, and the only other soul in the place was a Wainwright hand asleep over a paper in the corner booth. “You look like hell, honey.”

“Thank you.”

“I mean it kindly. You look like a girl who’s been standing in a shower.” Pearl put the pad down. “Remi says you’re going. After Thanksgiving. Back to Indiana.”

“Remi says a lot.”

“Remi says nothing, that’s how I knew it was true. She came in Saturday for pie and didn’t talk for the whole of it, and I’ve known that girl since she was born and she’s never once eaten pie in silence.” Pearl came around the end of the counter, which she didn’t do for customers, and sat on the stool next to Sunny’s, and looked at her, and Sunny understood that this was going to be a speech and that there was no getting out of it, pie or no pie.

“I’m going to tell you a thing,” Pearl said, “and then I’m going to give you the pies for nothing, so you’ll have to sit through it. I was wrong about you. In July. I told Marge you were weather. Blow in, blow out. Marge said leave that girl be, and I said the thing about sixty years. You know about that. Everybody knows about that. I’ve said sorry for it at this counter and I’ll say it at my grave.” She put her hand flat on the counter. “But here’s what I didn’t say sorry for, because I hadn’t worked it out yet. You think you’re weather too. That’s the thing. You think you’re a storm that came through this county and blew a man onto his knees in John Royston’s yard and put a rifle in a boy’s hands and shut Harvey’s on a Saturday, and now you’re going to do the decent thing and blow out before you do worse. That’s what’s in your face. I’ve been reading faces at this counter for forty years and I can read that one from the pie case.”

Sunny didn’t say anything.

“You’re not weather, honey.” Pearl said it plainly, the way she’d have said the coffee was ready. “You’re a girl who got followed. That’s all you are. And this town’s had men followed off it before you were born, and it’ll have them followed off it after, and not one of those men was ever anybody’s fault but his own. You didn’t bring him. He came. That’s on him. And what this county did about it, it did because that’s what it’s for, and not one soul in it is sitting home counting what you cost. Nobody’s counting, Sunny. Only you.”

The Wainwright hand turned a page in his sleep.

“I’ve got to go,” Sunny said. Her voice came out fine. It always did.

“I know you have. Lauren’s picking Lara’s sister up at Midland and you’ve got beds to make.” Pearl got up and went back around the counter and picked up the pad. “Two pies. Pecan and the apple. They’ll be at the house by six. And Sunny.”