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He heard her go down the hall. He heard her door. It shut the way it had on Tuesday, with her back against it. Then the house was the house, the fan, the windmill, nothing. He stood at the end of his bed with the lamp on and his hands at his sides for a long time before he understood he’d been asked to do something and had done it.

She’d said don’t. He hadn’t followed her.

The truck was where it always was.

He went down at midnight through the kitchen, past the table, past the place by the door where the rifle wasn’t anymore, out the back, across the yard in his boots with no shirt under his jacket. He got in. He shut the door, put the key in, turned it.

The engine caught. He sat there.

Midland was two hours. He’d done it at five in the morning for six months and he could do it at midnight with his eyes shut. The Burchall desk was still there with no window; nobody had taken it away, they’d just stopped expecting him at it, and Carla had called on Wednesday and he hadn’t picked up, and the voicemail was still on the phone in his pocket. Brody. Houston wants to know if you’ve finished playing cowboy. Call me. Two hours to Midland. Nine to Houston. He’d driven further than that for less reason than a woman at a door. He’d done it without a bag, too; the bag was under his bed where he’d told her it was, and he wouldn’t need it, because a man who left didn’t go back for a bag.

He sat with his hands on the wheel and the engine going and the yard in front of him.

Her window was dark. Top of the stairs, second on the left. He’d known which one it was since June and he’d never once looked up at it from the yard, because that was a thing a man did in a movie, and he looked up at it now, and it was dark, and she was behind it with her back against a door, and she’d said don’t.

She’d said don’t. She’d said it about him following her, and it was the only thing she’d asked, and he’d done it.

He thought about Olivia. He’d have said he didn’t, and he did. A fence line, and a girl who’d said no to him kindly, and surely, and already looking past him at the man she’d meant. He’d left the county the next month and told himself for years it was for the work. Two women. Two, in a life, who’d been asked, and both had said it to his face and meant it. One of them was married to his cousin now with a sale page and her name first, and he’d stood at that rail in October and been glad for her, and found out a man could be glad and still have a place in him where the no had gone in.

The second one was upstairs. She’d said it in the voice. He couldn’t hear the lie in it and she’d told him he couldn’t, and she was right, and it didn’t matter, because he’d stood in a room and asked, plainly, twice, and been told no, and a man who’d charmed his way out of every room he’d ever stood in had just found out what the inside of one looked like when the charm didn’t work.

He could go. That much was true. He sat there with the engine going and knew he could go, and knew there was a version of him that had already gone, that was at the county line, that was in Midland by two with the desk and no window, that was in Houston by dawn with a card in his pocket and Carla saying, about time, and every one of those versions was a man he’d been, and none of them had a father who’d asked a housekeeper how his son was getting on and nodded at his plate.

He turned the engine off.

The yard went quiet. The windmill. He sat there a while longer with his hands on the wheel and the key in his fingers. Then he took the key out, put it in his jacket, got out of the truck, shut the door. He went back across the yard, in through the kitchen, up the stairs, past her door, which was shut, into his room, and lay down on the bed with the lamp off and his boots on and didn’t sleep.

He was in the hay barn before light.

There was nothing to do in it. It was October, the hay was in and stacked, Chase had counted it twice. He stood in the dark with his hands in his pockets and the smell of it around him and waited for the sky to go gray, because it was the one building on the place with no window that looked at the house.

Dean came in at five.

He stopped in the door. He looked at his brother standing in a barn with nothing in his hands, and he came in, and stood beside him, and looked at the hay.

“You’re early.”

“Couldn’t sleep.”

“Uh huh.” Dean looked at the stack. “Greene called. He wants us both in his office Monday at ten. He’s got news on the corridor and he’ll only say it once.”

“Monday.”

“Monday.” Dean was quiet a moment. “Your truck was running at midnight. I heard it from the bed. Lara heard it too. She kept me in the bed. We lay there and listened to it run for a long time, and then it stopped.”

Brody didn’t say anything.

“It stopped,” Dean said again. “That’s all I’m saying. I heard it stop.” He put his hat on. He stood there a second longer than he needed to, and then he put his hand on the back of his brother’s neck, once, the way their father did it, and took it off. “Come eat. Whatever’s wrong, she’s still making breakfast for nine, and she’ll notice if you’re not one of them.”

He went out. Brody stood there a minute longer.

Seven years he’d been the man who could leave anything. A fence line, a county, a mother’s grave, a brother in a barn, a desk with no window, and every one of them he’d left before it could be the thing that left him. He’d sat in his father’s yard with the engine running and found he couldn’t. It wasn’t pride. It wasn’t the rifle, or Greene on Monday. He’d been told no by the one woman who’d ever bothered to say it to his face, in a voice he couldn’t hear the lie in, and it turned out that was a thing a man could stay for.

CHAPTER TWENTY

“More coffee, Brody?”

“Please.”