Page 15

She'd had four weeks to get ready for this, ever since Pearl said it over a coffee pot, and now he was twenty feet away and her heart was going hard enough to feel. Seven years since she'd stood at a fence in the dark and given him the one true thing she'd ever said out loud, and he'd been kind about it, and stacked chairs, and left. She'd turned that night over ever since, wondering if her honesty was what emptied his chair at every table in this county, wondering if he'd come home hating her, or healed, or not thinking of her at all, and not knowing which frightened her most.

Now she'd find out. In a bar, on a Saturday, with half the town watching, because nobody in this county ever got to find anything out in private.

Her shoulders ached from the afternoon. Four working days done now, eighty head through Owen's chute, and her body had stopped complaining about the work and started keeping track of other things instead, and today it had kept track of one thing in particular. A cow had come back up the alley wrong, fast, with her head down, and Owen's hand had closed on Olivia's hip and moved her, one motion, out of the gate line and behind him, and by the time the cow went by he'd already let go and gone back to the count like nothing had happened. Nothing had happened. Six hours later she was sitting in a booth in town with a cold bottle in her hand and she could still feel it, right now, the exact place on her hip, the size of his hand and the heat of it through two layers of coat, and every few minutes her body went back and stood in that one second again without asking her first. A beer was doing nothing about it, and now the one person alive who knew what she felt about Owen Royston was standing twenty feet away buying a round.

She'd handed him that knowledge herself, at a fence, in the dark. Whatever he'd done with it all this time, it walked when he walked now, and talked when he talked.

"You've gone somewhere," Lauren said.

"I'm right here."

"Mm."

The knot at the bar loosened out into stools and shouting.

"Africa," Knox said. "Start talking. Was there lions?"

"I ran a drill crew, Knox. I saw rock, dust, and a parts catalog."

"All that time and he saw a parts catalog," Jett said. "What's Burchall pay a man to look at a parts catalog?"

"More than Clay pays you."

The whole bar end of the room went up at that, Knox loudest, and Jett took it grinning. Remi still had hold of Brody's sleeve like he might leave again if she let go.

"How long are you here. Don't answer, you're here for good, the posting's Midland. Is the posting Midland?"

"The posting's⁠—"

"It's Midland, Ainsley looked it up. Where are you living? Not Midland, that's an hour. Daddy's kept your room, did you know that? Don't make a face, it's not sad, it's efficient⁠—"

"Rem."

"—Helen washes the curtains in there twice a year, and if you rent an apartment in Midland I'll burn it down myself. What happened to the woman who answered your phone at Christmas?"

"Nobody answered my phone at Christmas."

"Somebody answered it, a woman, Dean said⁠—"

"Nobody answered my phone, I never said, and you got it off Dean, who got it wrong."

"So there was a woman⁠—"

"Remi," Ainsley said. "Let the man drink one beer with both hands."

"He's had seven years of beers with both hands. I'm asking my questions."

"Take notes," Mason said, to nobody. "She's doing the whole seven years tonight. Alphabetical."

"Tell the lizard one," Knox said. "Dean tells it wrong."

"The lizard." Brody set his beer down like the story needed both hands. "Four foot of monitor lizard gets into the generator shed. Our cook goes in after it with a broom. The lizard wins the broom. Now it's got a broom, it's got the shed, and it's standing between forty men and the diesel, and the nearest parts run is two days out, so for two days that shed belonged to the lizard. We slid eggs under the door. Best boss I had the whole posting."

Knox put his head down on the bar. Jett had to set his bottle somewhere safe. Brody stood in the thick of his family with a beer he hadn't paid for and gave them the show, easy, warm, funny, and Olivia watched from the booth and thought the years had changed him less than they should have. Same grin. Same timing. Same way of making a room feel like the party had been waiting on him to start.

"Where's Owen?" Brody said.

The name went through her like the cold off the door.