Page 111 of Devoted

"You would. It's why I said it here."

Ainsley took the horse back and put her hand out. Brody dug in his shirt pocket and put a folded ten in it without looking. Olivia decided not to ask.

"Mama's got another one lined up for Sunday," Ainsley said to him.

"Has she?"

"Somebody's niece. Elementary teacher out of Midland. Mama says she's got a nice way about her."

"She'll have to get in the truck with a nice way about her," Brody said. "I'm going to be nine miles from that table pulling a calf." He grinned at both of them. It was the good grin and it stayed on too long.

Olivia let it go.

Edna rang at eleven, late for her, with the television going behind her.

"Well?"

"Six of them. Mabel and Opal and Opal's heifer and three more."

"Mm," said Edna.

"That's all you're going to say?"

"Your daddy paid two hundred dollars for that cow's grandmother out of a lot nobody else wanted. I told him he'd lost his mind. He had." Something creaked at the other end. "And now she's back in my trap and I'm in Midland, and Marilyn has told me she told me so five times since Tuesday. She's going to run out before I do."

"How's the hip?"

"It's a hip."

"Mama."

"There's a woman the clinic keeps putting in front of me. A nurse. She comes to the house instead of the other way about, and Elena thinks the world of her, and she's out of Odessa." Something rattled at the other end. "I've had her number in that kitchen drawer since February and I've not rung it."

"I'll ring it."

"You will not."

"Mama—"

"I'll ring it when I'm ready to ring it, and I'm not. Don't you take that tone with me from a hundred and ten miles away." The television went down a notch. "Put the cow's picture on that telephone of yours and send it to me. I want to see how fat she's got."

The barn at four in the afternoon smelled like hay and horse and hot tin. She'd gone in to get the halter and hadn't got it, because Owen had come in behind her, put his hands on her hips, and turned her around.

"You've been out there since six," she said.

"I have."

"You smell like a cow."

"I do." He walked her back into the boards and kissed her under the jaw, and she quit talking about the cow. "You had that paper in your hand for about a minute and a half this morning and I've thought about your face the whole day."

"My face?"

"Your face." He got a hand under her shirt and up her back. She got hold of his belt and pulled him in. The halter came off the nail and hit the floor, and neither of them went after it. "I'm going to want that paper framed."

"You are not framing a printer's proof."

"I'm going to frame it and hang it in the kitchen, and you're going to let me." He got her top button, then the next one, unhurried about it. "Say I can."