* * * *
We walked out into the pale Montana morning and stood by the truck in the clinic parking lot with gravel under our boots and the sky still thin and cold above us.
Caleb said, with the complete conviction of a man announcing the weather, “I want a yellow nursery.”
I stared at him. “We don’t have a nursery.”
“We’ll build one.”
He said it like it was already done. Like the nursery was simply a matter of time and counter space and the correct shade of yellow, and the certainty in his voice—warm, unstoppable, the firm tone Caleb used when he had decided something was happening and the universe was welcome to adjust accordingly—did something to my chest that felt permanent.
I opened the driver’s door. “Yellow.”
“Yellow-yellow. Not pale. Not mustard. Yellow like the eggs were Wednesday good.”
“Those eggs were committed.”
“They knew what they were about.” Caleb climbed into the passenger seat. “I want that kind of yellow. The kind that doesn’t apologize.”
I started the engine. The truck rumbled to life beneath us, and I pulled out of the clinic parking lot with two heartbeats in the cab that nobody else knew about yet, and the weight of that—the enormous weight of a secret this size—settled into my chest alongside everything else and did not move.
On the drive out of town, Caleb talked about names. Two of them. Possibly themed, possibly not, he was open to discussion, but he had opinions, strong ones, and he listed them while I drove and the county road unspooled ahead of us and the morning light thickened through the windshield.
“James for a boy,” he said. “Or William. William has dignity. James has... I don’t know, warmth?”
“James is my middle name.”
“I’m aware.”
“You want to name Sterling’s child after me?”
“I want to name our child after you. There’s a distinction.”
The word our landed in the cab and sat there, warm and certain, and I kept my eyes on the road because if I looked at Caleb’s face right now I was going to do something with my hands that would compromise our ability to stay on this road, which was already an affront to engineering and also God, and we had precious little margin for error as it was.
“Girls are harder,” Caleb said. His hands were folded in his lap. His profile was calm in the passenger seat light, and the contradiction of it—Caleb Pruitt, discussing baby names while hurtling down a county road that had personally victimizedour axle three times, completely serene—was something I filed under its own category: My Brother, Actually Fearless.
“Eleanor is pretty,” I said.
“Eleanor is the woman who tried to have Jackson killed.”
“Right. Not Eleanor.”
“Maybe something from the ranch. Black Butte has a nice ring to it for a middle name.”
“Black Butte Pruitt-Callahan. That child will need therapy by age six.”
“Pruitt-Callahan is already a lot to carry. The child will be resilient by necessity.”
I laughed. The sound bounced off the windshield and landed in the cab between us, warm and easy, and for approximately two minutes and seventeen seconds, the morning was perfect. The kind of perfect that lives in retrospect, the kind you don’t know you’re having until it’s already gone.
Then I checked the rearview mirror.
Dark late-model truck. No ranch plates. Two vehicles back, holding steady.
I’d seen it on the main road leaving the clinic. Had noticed it idling at the intersection when we pulled out, and filed it under the category of things that were probably nothing and definitely worth noting, because Mitch Pruitt had spent twenty-four years in foster care learning that probably nothing was the cousin of absolutely something, and the family resemblance was strong.
I saw it again at the first turn. Same distance. Same pace. Not speeding up, not falling back, just there, patient, the kind of patience that belonged to men who had time and intent and neither of those things was good for the people in front of them.
