I kept my face still.
"Your mama raised you right, and anyone who can see straight would know better 'an that."
The floorboards creaked behind me inside the house. A soft step. Then the screen door eased open and Brody stuck his head out.
He was shirtless, hair sleep-wrecked, bandage on his forehead, the bruise up his left side turned overnight from purple into a more committed sorta color. He looked at Denny once—assessing, unfriendly, not threatening, just getting a read. Then he looked at me.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
He held my eyes a beat longer. Nodded. Then he let the screen door close soft behind him and I heard his bare feet cross back into the kitchen. Not far. Close enough.
Denny watched the door close. Watched me for a beat after that.
"'Bout yesterday." He cleared his throat. "I didn't see it clean. Was lookin' at the chute and turned my head when the horse went. But somethin' weren't right. Wyatt had somethin' in his hand. I didn't get a good look. But there was somethin' in it, and he weren't supposed to be back there. Your boy hit the dirt a breath later, and I ain't stupid."
The coffee steam rose between us.
"I shoulda been watchin' closer. Shoulda clocked he was back there 'fore he got that far." He worked the brim of his hat with his thumb. "I'm sorry, Calvin. For whatever he done."
I watched him.
He kept his eyes on the hat.
"He took off last night. Truck and trailer both. Didn't tell me where but I 'spect he knew better 'an to come sniffin' back around after three men and a lady told him to get gone in the dirt." He shook his head. "He ain't comin' back through Meagher County. I can tell you that."
He looked up at me then.
"I'm done with him, Calvin. Got eyes in my head now I didn't have in 'em yesterday. Reckon I shoulda had 'em a long time ago."
I didn't answer.
I looked at him and said nothing. He flinched, just a little, at my silence.
He'd been Wyatt's daddy more than he'd been mine. Put his hand on Wyatt's shoulder across a hundred different fairgrounds while I stood three feet away, alone. Called him son. Laughed at his jokes and slapped his back and handed me over to him at fifteen like I was a rope Wyatt could use however he saw fit.
Years of that didn't get unmade in one night.
I was thirty-four. Not twelve. Not sixteen.
I knew better than to believe a man had new eyes because the stakes finally got high enough to force 'em open.
I said nothing.
He nodded once, slow, like he'd expected that.
Then he turned the hat in his hands again and started into the part I knew was coming. I could feel it shaping up in him the way a storm shaped up over the ridge—you saw it rollin' in before you heard it.
"I wasn't fit to be no one's daddy, Calvin."
The old name. The one my mama used. The one he hadn't earned in twenty-two years and was using now.
I didn't correct him.
"Your mama was a good woman. Too good for the likes of me, and I reckon we both knew that the day we said hello. She'd be damned ashamed of me. Of what I did to you. Of what I let happen under my nose 'cause lookin' too hard meant I'd haveta do somethin' 'bout it."
The meadowlark had gone quiet. Sun was hitting the front of the house now—warm on the porch boards, warm through the flannel.
