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“Don’t put it away.”

“No.”

“Don’t put it away, Brody, I want —” She stopped. Her eyes had gone bright. “I want to see it. Leave it there. Fourteen days.”

He moved then. Slow, the way she’d asked him to be with everything tonight, and kept his eyes on hers, and she kept hers on his, and it was nothing like the other nights, nothing like the rock, it was quiet and it went on and every time he thought he’d have to shut his eyes he didn’t. She had her hands on his back and then on his face. She said his name once, just his name, the way you’d say it to make sure a man was still there. And when she went, it was with her eyes open on his and her mouth open on nothing, no sound at all, and it took him with her, and he said it, the other one, the quiet one, into her mouth, and she said, “I know. I know,” and held his face while he shook.

The lamp was off. She hadn’t gone.

Two months of nights and she’d never once stayed past one, and it was two, and she was on her side with her back against his chest and his arm over her, and neither of them was asleep, and neither of them had said anything for a long time.

He’d been going to ask since August. He’d decided not to in the kitchen doorway on the second day, when she’d said get away from people and heard herself, and he’d decided not to on the county road with her hand on a tire iron, and he’d decided not to on the porch and in Earl’s lot and on the rock when she’d given him the Berrys and nothing else. If he asked, he’d get whatever she decided he’d earned. He’d said that to himself so many times it had stopped meaning anything.

He was going to Odessa on Wednesday. Fourteen days. Whatever it was, it had a phone number, and it called her at night, and he’d be an hour and a half off.

“Sunny.”

“Mm.”

“I’m going to ask you something. Once. And then I’m never going to ask it again, whatever you say.”

She didn’t move. He felt her not move, all down the front of him.

“Is there something you’re running from.” He said it plainly, into her hair, the only way he knew how to ask a thing that mattered. “Is there anything I should know? Anybody? Before I go?”

The fan turned.

He’d have taken anything. He’d have taken I can’t, or not yet, or it’s not in the terms. He’d have taken her getting up and going down the hall. He’d have taken her saying it was a man, and nothing else, and he’d have known what to do with fourteen days.

“No,” she said.

Quiet. In the voice from before, the one from the lamp, the one with nothing in it but him.

“Nobody. Nothing.” Her hand found his on her stomach and held it. “There’s nothing you need to know, Brody. Go to Odessa.”

He lay there.

Any other voice, he’d have known. He'd heard her tell Pearl three months across a counter, and tell Remi nothing happened the morning after the dance, in the flat fast voice, and he'd have known that one in the dark from forty feet. This was the voice she’d never used on anybody else, the one he’d only ever had with the lamp on and her hands on his face, and he’d never once heard it say a thing that wasn’t true.

So he believed it.

“All right,” he said, and put his face in her hair.

“Fourteen days,” she said.

“I know it.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

He called at eleven-ten the first night, from Odessa, and she'd been lying in her own room since ten with the phone on the second pillow, because at eleven she'd have been walking down the hall, and there was nobody at the end of it.

"You're up."

"I'm always up."

"Not up. At eleven you're in my room." His voice had road in it, and a motel wall, and a television going somewhere on the other side of it. "I'm in a room with a picture of a boat. There's no water for a hundred miles and they've put a boat on the wall."

"How's the field."