Page 93 of Devoted

He told her about the fire down at the creek that July, when he was seventeen. He'd driven out with eleven words worked out and a beer he never opened. Brody got there ahead of him. Brody said it first, drunk, flat on his back on a tailgate, and made Owen swear twice to keep it quiet.

"Keep what quiet?"

"That my cousin was in love with your daughter."

"And did you?"

"I've not told a soul in thirteen years."

"That's not the question I asked." Edna's voice didn't move. "I asked did you keep it quiet."

Owen turned the hat once and made himself quit.

"He asked me to keep it quiet," he said. "He never asked me to stand back. Not one word of that came out of Brody's mouth. I did that part in my own truck on the way home, by myself, and he's never asked me for it, and I've blamed him for it every day since anyway."

Brody sat down on the porch step. He put his forearms on his knees and looked at the boards between his boots.

"Four days after that fire I sat across a table from her in the library," Owen said. "Brody asked her to the harvest dance right there in front of me."

"And?"

"She looked down that table at me. And she waited."

"How long?"

"Long enough that everybody at that table watched her do it."

"And you?"

"I looked at a book I wasn't reading."

The screen door came open.

Olivia came out of her mother's house in the clothes she'd put on to go sign a paper in town. Hair up. Keys already in her hand. She stopped on the top step. Every head in that yard went to her and then came back to him.

Every other time in his life a door had opened like that and he had gone quiet and let it go by.

He kept talking.

"Every April for eleven years I've hauled that bull to this gate," he said. "Mick never shook on that. He was five months dead. I was nineteen, and I drove over here and told her it was an arrangement, and it wasn’t. It was mine. I made it up. I've run it every spring since and never gave her the true reason."

"I knew that," Edna said.

Owen stopped.

She'd had it the whole time. Standing in front of her he worked out how many people in this county had known and been kind enough to let him think they didn't.

"The year you first unloaded that bull you checked my gate latch twice before you got in your truck." Edna hadn't looked away from him once. "I'm seventy-one years old, son. I've spent my whole life watching men not say things."

"Mama," Olivia said, from the step.

"I'm not talking to you." Edna kept her eyes where they were. "Go on."

"The west fence along your line," Owen said. "Four sections. I've built it every winter since and told my daddy it wanted doing. It did want doing. That's not why I did it."

"That fence is better than mine."

"Yes, ma'am. It is."