Page 27 of Denied

Tuesday he was in the field at ten to five again. Dean was there at five past, lights off, same as Monday. They finished the south field before the sun came up and said nothing, and the weather held, and by Tuesday night the hay was in.

Brody had left him that too.

CHAPTER SEVEN

“She’s not going to ask,” Ainsley said. “So I will.”

“Ainsley.”

“What. It’s been three weeks. She’s sat on this porch three Tuesdays running and eaten Elena’s terrible dip and nobody’s said his name, and I’ve got a bet with Knox.”

“You’ve got a bet with Knox,” Lauren said, “about what.”

“About whether she says it first or he does. I’ve got her. Knox says him, because Knox thinks all men are Knox.”

It was the last Tuesday in July and Elena’s back porch had a fan going and five women on it and a bowl of something Elena called dip and everybody else called a mistake. Lara had her feet in Sunny’s lap because they’d swelled and Sunny’s lap had been nearest. Olivia had come, school being out, with a bottle of wine she’d opened in the truck. Lauren was on the step with her boots off. And Ainsley was on the rail with her legs swinging, looking at Sunny with the face of a girl who’d been told to leave something be and had decided that was only a suggestion.

“There’s nothing to say,” Sunny said.

“There’s never anything to say. That’s how you know.” Ainsley swung her legs. “Delia says you danced with him.”

“Delia says a lot.”

“Delia said you put his hand on your back yourself.”

Lara said, “Ainsley,” and Elena said, “Let her,” and Sunny sat there with a pregnant woman’s feet in her lap and four faces on her and thought, this is what it’s like, then. This is what it’s like to have women. You can’t get away from them and they won’t let you lie.

“I put his hand on my back,” she said. “It was a slow song and he’d said he wouldn’t touch me and he wasn’t going to, and I was tired of watching him not do it. That’s all. Three weeks ago. And since then he’s been on Clay’s west line from six till dark, and I’ve been in the kitchen, and we’ve passed a coffee pot maybe forty times without touching it at the same time, and I’ve slept fine.”

“You’ve slept fine,” Olivia said.

“Fine.”

“Sunny.” Olivia said it kindly. She had a way of saying things kindly that made them worse. “I lived nine miles from a man for thirteen years and told everybody I slept fine.”

Nobody said anything. Then Ainsley said, “She’s not going to say it,” and got her phone out to tell Knox, and Sunny took a piece of the dip, which was a mistake, and ate it anyway.

Thursday night at nine o’clock Sunny put her hand in her bag for her phone and came out with a piece of paper, and stood in the kitchen and read it, and said, “Oh, no.”

“What.”

“This.” She held it up. Lara, in the office doorway with her feet already swelling, looked at it and shut her eyes. “This is your prescription. The blood pressure one. From this morning. It was supposed to go to the pharmacy by the hospital and I put it in my bag at lunch and drove home with it.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine, it’s two hours away and the man said tomorrow.”

“He said tomorrow because he says tomorrow to everybody. I’ll start it Saturday.”

“You’ll start it tomorrow. He looked at that scan and made a face and said tomorrow, and I was standing there, Lara, I saw the face.”

“He makes faces. It’s his job.”

“And it’s my job to have put that paper on his counter, and I didn’t, so I’ll drive back.” She had her keys already. “Two hours. There’s a twenty-four-hour one by the hospital, I saw it. I’ll be back by one.”

“Sunny, it’s nine o’clock at night.”

“And it’s a road. I’ve driven roads.” She looked at Lara, who was on the office chair with her feet up and her hand on the front of her and that face on, the one from the specialist’s, and she said, quieter, “Let me. It’s my mistake. Let me fix it.”