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“Sunny?”

“I said okay.” She looked at him then. Her face was doing the thing it did when she was working, which was nothing, on purpose. “It’s your job. You don’t have to tell me where you’re going. That’s not in the —”

“I know what’s not in the terms. I’m telling you anyway.” He stood there. “I wanted you to hear it from me. Before the table. Before Remi. I wanted to say it to your face, and I’ve said it, and that’s all.”

She looked at him a long moment across the kitchen.

“Why?” She asked.

“Because you’d have thought I’d gone.”

He hadn’t meant to say that. It was out, and it was true, and he stood there with it in the room and watched her hear it. She didn’t say anything. She looked at him, and then down at the laptop, and shut it, and put both hands flat on the lid.

“Wednesday,” she said.

“Six in the morning.”

“Then go wash. You smell like a well.” And she got up, and went to the stove, and he went up, and on the stairs he heard her turn the faucet on and leave it running, which she did when she wanted the room to have a noise in it.

He told the table at supper, and the old man said, “Odessa,” and nothing else, and Dean looked at his plate, and Chase said, “Two weeks,” and Jett said, “Burchall’s got a field out there? Since when,” and Lara, at the far end with her feet up, looked at Sunny, and Sunny passed the potatoes.

“Two weeks,” Levi said. “That’s fourteen days.”

“That’s right.”

“Who’s going to fix the faucet.”

“The faucet’s fixed.”

“Sunny said it drips.”

“It doesn’t drip,” Sunny said, and Levi said, “You said it —” and Sunny said, “Eat your supper, Levi,” in a voice that made the table go quiet for a second, and then Remi laughed, and it went on.

Remi caught him at the sink after.

“Two weeks.”

“You heard.”

“I heard. I heard you tell her first, too, I was in the hall.” She dried a plate. “You’ve never told anybody a thing before you did it. Not once. Not in your life.”

“Remi.”

“I’m not saying anything.” She put the plate up. “I’m saying I heard it, and I’ve got a date on my phone, and I’m adding this one to it.”

Sunny was at the stove Tuesday at five when he came down, an hour before anybody, with the coffee already made.

“You’re up.”

“I’m always up.”

“You’re not up at five.”

“I’m up at five when there’s a man leaving for Odessa in twenty-five hours and nobody in this house has thought to ask him what he wants to eat before he goes.” She put a plate down at his place. Eggs. Bacon. Biscuits. The peach preserves. “That’s what you’re getting Wednesday too. Sit.”

He sat. She stood at the stove with her back to him and the faucet running, and he ate, and neither of them said a word about anything, and it was the best breakfast he’d had in the house, and he’d have said so if it had been in the terms.

“Brody.”