Page 4 of Denied

He went on. Her phone lit up on the counter between them, face up, a number with no name on it, and she turned it over without looking at it and kept writing, and he stopped talking for the second time that day. Not long. Long enough.

“Somebody you don’t want?”

“Somebody selling something.”

“Uh huh,” he said, and picked up his jug and went, and she sat there with her hand flat on the back of the phone until the screen went dark under it.

She finished the week and closed the laptop and did not look out the window, and then she looked out the window. He was at the tractor with his back to the house, and as she watched he turned his hand over and looked at the inside of his own wrist, and shook his head once at nobody, and went back to work.

She went and found the low cabinet and got the roasting pan out of it and put it on the counter where a pregnant woman could reach it without the whole house hearing about it, and stood there a minute with both hands flat on the counter, and breathed.

Fine. He was good-looking and he was funny and he had forearms she was going to have to stop looking at, and none of those things were going to be her problem for three months. She didn’t want a man. She didn’t want a man near her, or behind her, or reading over her shoulder, and she’d meant every word of that in Oklahoma and she meant it now, and the fact that her pulse was still up ten minutes after he’d walked out the door meant nothing except that she was tired.

She’d decided. A little late, she noticed, but she’d decided.

Supper at the Royston place was ten people and a dog, and she cooked it, and nobody died, and a boy of seven told her it was better than Helen’s and was told by his father to hush and told her again, quieter.

John at the head. Lara at the foot with her feet on a second chair and a man beside her who had to be Dean, big and unhurried, dark, with one hand on the back of his wife’s chair the whole meal, like he didn’t know it was there. The boy, Levi, who had four facts about hyenas ready before the bread was passed and a fifth he was saving. A girl of nine named Giana with a book under the table she thought nobody could see, who watched Sunny the way her grandfather did, and then decided something, and passed her the butter without being asked. A long lean one named Chase who said grace fast and plain. A younger one with clean boots and a collared shirt who came in late and smelled of the road and was called Jett. A girl with dark hair and quick hands called Remi, who looked at Sunny once, all the way through, and then at Brody, and then back, and then at her plate, satisfied about something, and Sunny thought, oh, I’m going to like you, and you’re going to be trouble.

And Brody, the hot cowboy from the yard, was down the far end with his hair wet from a hose and the grin on, telling Levi that hyenas would eat a Royston if it stood still long enough, and Levi saying they would not, and the man saying, son, I’ve seen it.

Sunny put the platters down and sat where there was a chair, which was Helen’s, at the kitchen end, and ate, and it was the first meal she’d eaten at a table with other people in six weeks, and she hadn’t known that until she was doing it.

It took about four minutes for the table to forget she was new, and about thirty seconds after that for Jett and Chase to start performing.

“Jett,” John said. “That haul come in.”

“Come in Thursday.” Jett reached past Chase for the bread and got his hand slapped for it. “Would’ve been here for it if somebody hadn’t sent me to Lubbock for a part that was sitting in our own barn.”

“It wasn’t sitting in the barn.”

“It was sitting in the barn, Chase, I’ve got a photo of it sitting in the barn.”

“Then you’ve got a photo of the wrong part.”

“Dean,” John said, over the top of them. “The red heifer.”

“She’ll do. Gary’s coming Friday.” Dean took the bread from Jett without looking and gave it to his wife, and Jett watched it go with the face of a man who’d been robbed in his own home.

"Levi. What'd you find in the tank?"

"A lizard." Levi sat up. "It was dead. I kept it."

"Where?"

"In my room."

"It's in a jar on his windowsill," Lara said, "and it's going in the trash Sunday whether he's made his peace with it or not."

"It's not hurting anybody."

"It's hurting me, baby, I can smell it from the hall." She turned to John before Levi could get the next one out. "And before you ask, Elena says fine. Everything where it ought to be." She put a hand on the front of her and left it there. "It's a foot, apparently. It kicks. It kicks more when Dean talks, which this one already knew, because he sat there and talked at it for ten minutes to prove it."

"Worked," Dean said.

"Ten minutes is the most he's said in a row since the wedding," Remi said. "Shame it was to a stomach."

"Remi."