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Neither of them looked up. If either woman noticed he’d gone quiet, nobody said so.

He helped clear, over Edna’s objection, and dried what Olivia washed, the two of them at the sink not talking, her elbow an inch from his, the window over the sink black with the yard light hanging in it, and it was the most dangerous ten minutes of his week and he’d have stood there till Easter.

Edna walked him to the door, which took her a while, and which she did anyway. "Same time next Saturday," she said. "Go on, now. You’ve got the look men get right before they start thanking people."

He drove home with the radio off and both windows down in February, with Helen’s dish on the seat beside him. It didn’t help.

The four-wheeler came across his west section at seven the next morning, flat out, scattering heifers, and Owen knew who it was before he could see a face, because nobody else in two families had ever driven anything that way and called it visiting.

He kept forking hay. The machine came up the alley and shut off at the gate. Boots hit the ground, and then Brody was standing at the rail in a borrowed coat with his breath steaming, grinning at him across seven years like they’d left off on a Tuesday.

"There he is," Brody said. "The last Royston in Texas who hasn’t hugged me."

"You’re scattering my heifers."

"They’ll live." He came through the gate and latched it behind him, county-raised even now, and stood there with his hands in his pockets, reading the pens, the barn, the stacked panels, all of it, fast and complete. "Look at this place. You built all this since I left."

"Most of it."

"It’s good." He meant it, and said it plain. "Where’s this bull I keep hearing about? Remi writes me about that bull like he’s her nephew."

"East side. You want an introduction?"

"I’ve met famous people before." The grin came back up over the plain. "I’m home, by the way. For good. Posted stateside, Midland office. I wanted to see your face when I told you."

"Why didn’t you call, then."

"I’m a face-to-face kind of guy."

Owen put the fork down and looked at him. Same Brody. Older around the eyes, thicker through the shoulders, and the same all the way down to the ground, standing in a cold pen at seven in the morning like the party was wherever he was. The last time Owen had seen this face it was twenty-three and getting into a car, and he’d carried what he knew about that morning ever since without setting it down once. Now the face was back, and wanted to be hugged.

He crossed the pen and shook his cousin’s hand, and Brody looked at the hand, then pulled him in anyway, one arm, hard, thumped his back twice, and let him go before Owen had decided what to do about it.

"You’re an ass for staying away this long," Owen said.

"I know it."

"Seven years, and your daddy watching that road."

"I know it, Owen."

"All right," Owen said, and picked the fork back up, because the more of this they did the closer it got to things that couldn’t be talked about in a pen or anywhere else. "You know it."

Brody let that sit. He walked the rail instead, looking at cattle, and Owen watched him do what Brody had always done: read a place the way other men read a paper. He stopped at the far pen, where the current batch stood over their hay with their new tags bright, and he looked at them a while.

"Those are Bateman cows."

"They are."

"That’s Mick’s brand. Whole pen of it." He turned around. "Olivia said you were helping get the herd ready. She didn’t say they were living with you."

"They’re not living with me. They come over in batches, we work them, they go back. It’s a three-man job and that outfit’s got one woman and a cane."

"So you gave them your pens."

"Somebody had to."

"Sure," Brody said, easy, and looked at the cows a moment longer, and Owen went on forking hay and did not look at anything except hay. "Somebody had to."