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“She did.”

“Uh huh.” Earl put the alternator in a sack. He looked at the window again. He looked at the slate on the wall behind him, which had been blank since June, and he looked at the chalk, which was on the counter, and he looked at Brody.

“Don’t,” Brody said.

“I haven’t done anything.”

“You were thinking about it.”

“I’m always thinking about it, son, it’s how I make my living,” Earl said, and gave him his change.

She was at the tailgate. She’d been at the tailgate the whole time he was in there, with her arms folded, and she didn’t unfold them when he came out, and he put the sack in the bed and stood there on his side of the truck and she stood on hers.

“We’re going to talk about it,” he said.

“There’s nothing to —”

“There’s a porch, Sunny. There’s a porch and there’s my shirt and there’s your teeth, and I’ve got a mark on my lip, and Remi’s already seen it and hasn’t said anything, which means she’s saving it. So we’re going to talk about it, here, in Earl’s lot, because it’s the only place in the county with nobody in it, and then I’ll drive you home and you can go back to not looking at me, but we’re doing it first.”

She looked at him across the bed of the truck. Then she unfolded her arms.

“Fine. I’ll go first.” Her voice had gone flat and fast, the voice he’d heard her use on Pearl. “I’m here till Thanksgiving. Then Helen’s back and I go home. I told John that, I told Pearl that, I told the whole diner that, and it’s true. I don’t do this. I don’t do what happened on that porch, I’ve never done it, I don’t know what got into me and I’m not going to find out. I’m done with men. I said that to Pearl in front of a room and I meant it, and one cowboy on a porch at midnight doesn’t change it. And I’m not staying. Whatever you think that was, it wasn’t the start of something, because I’m not a start-of-something person and I’m not going to be one in three months in your father’s house.” She stopped. “That’s all of it. That’s the true things. Say yours.”

He’d been waiting for it. He’d known every word before she’d said it, because she’d been saying it with her back for two days, and he’d told himself in the truck that when she said it he’d take it, because a man who asked got the answer he’d earned.

“Fine,” he said.

She blinked.

“Fine?”

“Fine. You’re gone in November. You don’t do this. You’re done with men. You’re not staying.” He counted them off on the tailgate with one finger. “That’s four things, and I heard every one, and I believe every one. What I don’t believe is that you didn’t have my shirt in your hand.”

“I —”

“You had my shirt in your hand, Sunny. Both hands. You bit me.” He touched his lip. “I’m not complaining. I’m saying it happened, and you’re standing in Earl’s lot telling me the true things, and you left that one out, and I’m not going to let you.”

“It was —”

“If you say it was nothing I’m going to get in this truck and drive home and never speak of it again, and I’ll mean that too. So don’t say it was nothing. Say what it was.”

Her chin came up. He’d learned that chin. It came up when she was about to be honest and hated it.

“It was the best thing that’s happened to me in a year,” she said. “And it can’t happen again. Both of those. At once.”

Neither of them said anything. Behind him, through the window of the feed store, he could feel Earl not looking at them the way Earl didn’t look at things, with his whole face.

“All right,” Brody said. “Why can’t it?”

“Because I told you why.”

“You told me four things about November. You didn’t tell me why a woman who bit me on a porch can’t do it again in August.”

“Because it’ll mean something!” She said it too loud for the lot, and heard herself, and dropped it. “Because it’ll mean something, Brody. It already does, that’s the problem, I’m standing in a feed store parking lot at ten in the morning arguing with you about it. That’s what it means. And in November, because your father says Helen’s sister’s worse and it’s November now, not September, I’m getting in my car and driving two days the other way, and I’d like to be able to do that without leaving anything behind on this ranch that I’ll have to think about on the road. That’s the why. I don’t leave things behind. I’ve done it. It doesn’t work.”

He looked at her. She was flushed and her chin was up and her arms were folded again, hard, and she’d just said the truest thing anybody had said to him since Dean in the barn, and he’d have liked to walk around the truck and put his arms around her and he stayed where he was, because she’d have hit him, and she’d have been right.

“Earl’s watching,” he said.