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"Yes."

"How long did you stand in that barn before you got it out?"

"I fed her horses first."

"Course you did." She laughed, and it came out wrong. "Two days for your sister. Thirteen years for me."

"That's about right."

"Don't agree with me."

"It's true."

"Mama says you filed on your own daddy's water."

"I did."

"With your name on it."

"There wasn't another name to put."

"You'll take on Clay Royston in writing." She heard herself say it flat. "And you won't say six words to Pearl."

"No."

"Is that your hand on the board?"

"It is."

"Anybody help you make it?"

"No."

"Anybody know you were driving out here?"

"Ainsley," he said. "And Brody."

"Brody." She wiped her face again. "So that's two more people who had it before I did. There's my whole year, Owen, in one afternoon."

He didn't answer that, and she went on.

"You put it in paint." She was steady now and quiet, and it was worse than the crying had been. "On a board, on a horse, nine miles out of town where there isn't a soul on this road but my mother. You'd write it and haul it out here in a trailer. You would not stand at Pearl's counter on a Tuesday and say it where anybody could hear you. Say it now."

His jaw went. His hand closed on the lead. He stood there in front of her with all of it in his face and not one word coming out, and she watched him try.

"There it is," she said.

"Liv."

"That's twice you've said my name." She put her hand up. "What happens to him?"

"He's yours."

"I'm gone inside a week. Where does he go?"

"Ainsley'll keep him as long as you want him kept. Or he comes to my place and eats my grass and you come and get him any day of your life."

"And do what? Drive out from Midland to visit a horse?"