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“I know you’re fine,” he said, in the dark, and she heard him put the carton back, and shut the fridge, and go out the back door into the yard in his jeans at two in the morning, rather than come up the stairs behind her.

Addi was in the doorway at ten, in a silk thing that had no business in that house, with two glasses of wine, and held one out.

"Lara says you don't drink on a weeknight. I say you're standing in a closet with the light off, so it's a weeknight for somebody else."

Sunny took it.

"I'm not going to ask what he did."

“He didn’t do anything.”

“I know. That’s what’s wrong with him. If he’d done something he’d have a leg to stand on and he hasn’t, he’s just wandering around this house like a man who’s been hit by a truck he never saw.” She looked at Sunny over the glass. “So it’s you. You did the thing. And you’re going to Indiana in three weeks with your chin up and a bag that’s never been unpacked, and you think that’s the decent way to do it.”

“Addi.”

“I’m not asking. I said I wasn’t.” She pushed off the wall. “I’ll tell you a thing instead, since you saw it at supper on Monday and you’ve been decent enough not to say. There’s a man in this county I’ve been sleeping with for a year. Every time I’m in town. Since my sister’s wedding. It’s a vacation. That’s what I call it. I fly in, I have a very good time, I fly out, and I sit at the far end of every table from him in between with my face on straight, because I decided in Boston that was all it was going to be. We’ve never talked about it. Not once, in a year. I never asked him what he wanted and he never asked me. I’ve been calling that decent, Sunny. It’s not decent. I’m scared, and I’ve dressed it up.” She drank. “Goodnight. Lara’s kicking again and she wants a foot rubbed and it’s not going to be Dean, he’s got hands like a fence post.”

She went down the hall. Sunny stood in the doorway of the guest room and looked after her, and thought about a Wainwright boy at the far end of a table who’d said one word all supper, and didn’t say his name, because Addi hadn’t.

Two in the morning, Thursday, and Lara’s voice in the hall, not loud, saying “Dean,” and then, “Dean, it’s now.”

Sunny was up before she’d decided to be. She was in the hall in the T-shirt and then she was in their doorway. Lara was standing by the bed with her hand on the wall and her face very calm and a dark patch spreading on the floor under her. Dean was sitting up in the bed with a look on him she’d never seen on any man. Sunny said, “Okay,” and took over.

She’d never done it. She’d read the chart. She’d read the chart forty times since August and she’d been in a hundred rooms where something went wrong fast, and it was the same skill, and she used it. She got Dean into his jeans and Lara into a chair and dry clothes, and got the bag out of the closet that had been packed since September. She put towels on the floor and the kitchen light on. She took Dean’s keys off the hook, put them in his hand, and closed his hand around them, because he’d have stood there holding them otherwise. “Drive. Two hours. You’ve done it in the dark a hundred times. Don’t talk to her, she’ll tell you if she needs you to. Go.”

“The kids⁠—”

“I’ve got the kids. Go.”

They went. The truck went over the cattle guard at two-twenty with the lights on and she stood in the kitchen and watched it go and then turned around, and the old man was standing in the kitchen doorway in his boots and his shirt, with his hat in his hand, at two-twenty in the morning.

“They’ve gone,” Sunny said.

“I heard.”

“Dean’s driving.”

“I heard that too.” He stood there. He looked at the wet towels on the floor and the chair pulled out and the kitchen light on at two-thirty, and he put his hat on the table, and sat down, and she understood that he was going to sit at that table till the phone rang, however long that was, and that he’d sat at it once before.

“I’ll make coffee,” she said.

“Do that.”

She made coffee. She made it for two, put his in front of him, sat down across from him with hers. Neither of them said anything. The hours went by. At three Remi came down and sat too. At four-thirty Chase’s truck came into the yard because Remi had called him. At five the phone hadn’t rung, and the kids would be up at six, and every soul in the house who could drive was either in Midland or sitting at a table waiting for the phone.

Except one.

She went up the stairs. She went down the hall, past the guest room, past the bathroom, to the end, to the door she hadn’t stood at since Saturday, and she stood at it, and she knocked.

He opened it. He was dressed. He’d been dressed since two, she could see that, boots on, sitting on the bed in the dark for three hours listening to a house that hadn’t asked him for anything.

“I need you to drive the kids,” she said. “At daylight. To Midland. They should be there. Giana’s old enough and Levi’s not but he’ll never forgive anybody if he isn’t. I’ve got John and I’ve got the house and Remi’s got the phone, and there’s nobody else. I’m asking.”

He looked at her.

“You’re coming,” he said.

“I’ve got John.”