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“Who?”

“Earl. On the slate. You and her.”

Brody didn’t say anything.

“BRODY R & THE HOUSEKEEPER,” Chase said, to the grease gun. “BEFORE THANKSGIVING. Three to one against.” He wiped his hands. “Against what, I don’t know. I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to know what he’d say.”

“It’s not a thing.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“There’s nothing to chalk.”

"I didn't say there was." He looked at his brother, once, the way he'd looked at him through the truck window a month back. "Dad'll hear. Everybody hears. I'm just saying so you know the town's talkin'." He went out and left the barn door open the way Dean had, and Brody stood there with the whole county betting on his business.

CHAPTER NINE

“You’re not sleeping,” Lara said.

“I’m sleeping.”

“You’re not. You’ve got that look, the one where you’re wanting something and telling yourself you’re not. I had it for two months in this house before Dean got his head out of his own backside, and I know it when I see it, Sunny, I’ve seen it in a mirror.” Lara had her feet up on the office chair and the ledger on the front of her, which was the only flat place she had left. “Whatever it is, do it or don’t. But pick one, because you burned the biscuits Tuesday and John noticed and didn’t say, and when John doesn’t say, it’s bad.”

“I didn’t burn the —”

“You burned the biscuits. Chase ate one to be kind. Chase.” Lara turned a page. “That’s all. I’m not asking. I’ve never once asked you a thing and I’m not going to start. Go do whatever it is.”

It was the twelfth of August, a Thursday, two weeks since Earl’s lot, and Sunny had said when I say and then not said it, for twelve days, and the whole house knew something and nobody knew what, and she’d burned the biscuits.

She’d meant to make him wait. That had been the idea, in the truck, with the terms fresh: make him wait, because a man who’d wait was a man who meant it, and because she’d needed to know she could still say no to him after she’d said yes. She’d found out. She could. She’d said no to him with her whole body every night for twelve nights, lying in a bed twenty feet from his listening to him not sleep either, and she’d proved whatever she’d wanted to prove on about the fourth night and kept going anyway, because stopping meant walking down that hall, and walking down that hall meant it was real.

He hadn’t asked. Not once. He’d come in from the west line at six every night with the dust on him and eaten what she put in front of him and washed his plate, and looked at her across the table with nothing on his face that Remi could read, and gone up. Twelve nights. He’d said he was learning, in the truck, and it turned out he’d meant it.

“Lara.”

“Mm.”

“Where’s Remi tonight.”

“Lubbock. Back Sunday.” Lara didn’t look up. “John’s in bed by nine. Dean’s asleep by ten-thirty, he’s been up since four. The kids are out by eight and nothing wakes Levi, we’ve tested it. And the office door sticks, so if I’m in here you’ll hear it.” She turned a page. “I’m not asking.”

“You’re not asking.”

“I’m doing the books,” Lara said, and Sunny stood in the office doorway and looked at the back of a pregnant woman’s head, and loved her, and went to find him.

He was on the porch. He was on the porch most nights now, after supper, in the old man’s chair with his boots on the rail, because the house was too small for two people not looking at each other and the porch had a view.

She came out and stood at the rail. She didn’t sit.

“Tonight,” she said.

He didn’t move. His boots stayed on the rail and his hat stayed on his knee, and he looked at the yard a while, and then at her, and she watched him decide not to ask if she was sure, and she’d have kissed him for it right there if the office window hadn’t been six feet away.

“All right,” he said.

“After eleven.”

“All right.”