“Six million dollars is a lot of money, you know,” she said.
“I so love your oblique conversation openers. Do go on.” He idly traced patterns on her back: wings, tails, and crested spines.
She raised her head. “I’m ballparking, but say we send Beast to your mysterious donor for cleaning and casting and then auction him at Christie’s for twelve million. Half of that, minus fees and taxes, would be mine. I could buy a lot of tickets to London with six million dollars.”
She knew even before his face changed. She’d studied him so carefully, she could feel his thoughts in the density of the air.
“I won’t tell you not to visit, Ripley. If it were only about me, I would send you all the tickets you needed. But how long could that go on?”
“As long as we need it to.”
He finger-combed her hair away from her forehead. “I’m not saying we won’t find a way. Someday. I care about you more than I ever thought possible.”
He didn’t want them to sayI love you.It was the only conviction he hadn’t given up, this idea that not saying the words would prevent the feelings from happening and thus protect them—protect her—from at least some small measure of grief.
“But time won’t wait for some things, Ripley. If you want…children,” he said, an indecipherable note in his voice, “that wouldn’t work if I were in London. A parent who’s more of a bedtime story than a person, who shows up with gifts for the odd weekend—you wouldn’t want that for your family.”
“People do it. Military families do it.”
“A thing can be possible and still be something you wouldn’t want for yourself.”
He was right. She didn’t want to watch her child wait for James the way she’d waited for her mom. James might not want that either.
“This sucks,” she said, her voice thick. A hot tear dripped onto his chest.
“Yes,” he said, brushing her cheek. “And it’s also the best thing that’s ever happened to me or ever will happen to me, no matter where our lives take us. I don’t want to think of you sad after I’m gone. I want you to remember this and feel happy.”
“Will you feel happy?”
“Yes,” he said firmly. “I will. Now kiss me some more, my darling. Let’s forget the world for a little while.”
She kissed him, but she didn’t forget.
“That’s a lot of drywall you’re installin’.”
An older white man—a rancher by the look of him, wizened and wiry and a little bowlegged, his hat set back on his head in a mild concession to the indoors—is scrutinizing Ripley curiously. He’s maybe Geraldine’s age, but it’s hard to tell with a face that’s taken so much weather. Still, he looks kind.
“It’s for fossils,” she says, wincing at the slip. Couldn’t she have said something vague about flipping a house? Also, there are way too many sacks of plaster on her cart. This is why she’s not allowed to go shopping alone.
“Oh, yeah,” the man says. “My grandson does that.”
“Hope he has good luck this summer. Have a good day.” She grabs her cart and wheels the whole teetering business over to the next aisle. Once she’s sure the rancher has moved on, she pushes it back again and unloads bags until she’s within the weight limit for the Charger’s rear axles. It was impractical to drive it here, especially because they’ll have to load everything into a jeep when they get back to Yellowtail, but it’s bringing her a lot of pleasure these days.
She shoots James a text from the checkout line:Meet you outside.
She’s arranging bags Tetris-style in the trunk when a man says, “Need some help?”
She smiles, a little embarrassed to have the rancher see how few bags she ended up buying. “No, thanks, I’m—”
It’s not the rancher.
It’s a tall blond man wearing expensively distressed jeans and an elbow-patched tweed jacket, a sardonic expression tugging at one side of his mouth. She used to think that one-sided smile was cool and a little wicked. Now it looks like a baited hook.
“Will,” she says, her tongue stunned and clumsy. “What are you doing here?”
Will’s wearing his hair longer, in a shaggy style that curls around his ears. He’s grown a short skim of a mustache along his full, exaggerated upper lip. A thick class ring adorns his right middle finger, and if a gold-plated fuck-you doesn’t sum up Will Stone, Ripley doesn’t know what would.
“What a coincidence” is the first lie out of his mouth. “I was walking down the street in Hercules, Montana, andbam! There’sSteve Adams’s car at”—he shoulder-checks the sign—“Millar’s Feed-n-Seed. How is your dad, anyway?”
