I leave the towel folded on the counter and walk to the front door, pull on my boots and settle the white hat on my head.
The light's gone outside and Phantom's still south of here on the road, and somebody on this property needs to be moving in the dark.
I'm walking the perimeter inside of a minute.
The western fence is quiet. The pull-off on the county road is empty—Hartley hasn't been back since the sedan got returned.
The southern gate is locked. The cattle in the back pasture are bedded down. The cedar smells the way it smells this time of night, sharper than it does at noon.
I cut back through the yard past the kennel and Thunder is sitting on the bench outside it with a cigarette he's not lit yet.
He sees me coming.
He doesn't stand up. He just lifts the cigarette in my direction the way a man does when he's asking permission to ask a question and answering it himself in the same gesture.
I stop walking.
He says, low, "She come to your door today, brother?"
"Yeah."
"Mm."
He doesn't ask any more than that. He doesn't have to. He looks across the yard at Hadley's cabin like he's confirming a thing he already knew, and then he looks back at me and gives me one slow nod.
It's the same nod he gave me in church on the morning I told the brothers about Hartley.
I tip my hat at him and keep walking.
I walk back through the property toward my own cabin and Hadley's cabin lights are still on.
Her kitchen window is dim—she's got the small light over the sink on, not the overheads. Nash's bedroom is dark. She's probably reading at the table.
I stand at the edge of the gravel and I look at her cabin.
For a moment I contemplate about going up to her door, but I don't do it.
Hadley initiated the touch this afternoon.
That doesn't mean she wants me in her cabin at this hour with her boy asleep down the hall and her own bed waiting for her.
A patient man knows the difference between a yes she's said with her actions and a yes she's said with her words, and tonight I only have one of the two.
I stand there a few moments longer than I should.
I think about Garrett. About what kind of man he was. About what it must've been like for him in that hospital bed knowing he was leaving a wife and a boy to a world that wasn't gonna handle them gently.
About what he'd want for her. About whether what he'd want has anything to do with me.
I'm not the man Garrett was. I'm not going to ever be the man Garrett was, and I'm not going to try.
But I can be a man who walks past her cabin tonight instead of up to her door.
That's the one thing I can do for him.
I walk past her cabin and back to my own.
I'm halfway up my porch when I hear her screen door open.
