Page 45 of Devoted

“That one on the end’s the one you pulled?”

“Owen pulled him. I held the tail.”

“That’s not how Pearl tells it.”

“Pearl tells it however she thinks it’ll be most interesting.” She put her own arms on the rail, careful of the left hand. “You didn’t drive out here to eat pie, Brody.”

“I’d drive a lot further for that pie.”

“You’d drive anywhere for anybody’s pie, so why here?”

He laughed, one note of it, and looked at the cattle a while longer. When he talked again the laugh was gone out of it, and what was under it was plain and even. She’d never heard that voice from him. She knew it anyway.

“Dad’s barbecue,” he said. “Seven years ago July. The fence behind the barn.”

She didn’t move. A calf on the far side bawled and found its mother.

“Okay,” she said.

“I’m not going to make you say it again. I heard it fine. You said, it’s Owen, and then you said it’s always been Owen, and I stacked chairs for Helen and got in my truck Sunday morning. I’ve had a long time to sit with it. I’ve done that. It’s not why I’m standing here.”

“Then why are you standing here?”

“Because I asked him.” He said it to the cattle. “Friday night, at Jett’s. I asked him straight, was he in love with you. He looked me in the face and lied to me.”

Her hands closed on the rail. The tape pulled. “You don’t know that.”

“I’ve known that man since before either one of us could walk, Liv. I know what his face does. He’s lying, and I want to know what he does when he thinks he’s losing you.”

“What did he say?”

“Doesn’t matter what he said.”

“It matters to me.”

“I know it does, but I’ve told you enough.” He turned his head and looked at her then, with nothing performed on him anywhere. “I’ll told you he lied, acted like he didn’t love you. I won’t hand you the exact words. They’re his, and you’d carry them around, and I’ve watched you carry things.”

She looked back at the trap. She could see the bull calf from the barn, wide in the head like his daddy, butting at the heifer’s bag.

“So what,” she said. “You want me to do what with that?”

“Be seen with me.”

She turned her head.

“Lamesa. Harvey’s on a Saturday. Church, if your mama can stand it. The sale barn when you take the culls.” He said it easy, light on top, and the light didn’t go all the way down. “You get in my truck. I put my hand on your back walking in somewhere, you laugh at something I say, he hears about it before we’ve ordered, because this is where we live. Then we find out what Owen Royston does when he’s watching it. We get the truth out of him. He’s too proud to say it on his own.”

“That’s a con.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“On your own cousin.”

“On my own cousin. My best friend. I know what my family’d call it. Dean would give me all kinds of shit, and I’d stand there and take it.” He didn’t look away. “It’s a con. I’m not going to dress it up for you.”

She laughed. It came out of her with no warmth in it at all. “You know what you are, Brody? You’re a con man. You always were. You’re just the nicest one I ever met.”

“I’ve been told.”