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He took it on the chin, and I felt worse for saying it.

I spent the afternoon at the kitchen table with a pencil and the feed store bill, doing math I already knew the answer to. Take the Pruitts out, and I could cover hay and Mia’s wages through the end of the month. Then another bill came due in October. After that it depended on who else heard what, and who else decided they couldn’t sleep too.

Switch came in once. He stood in the doorway like he had a fix for it in his pocket.

“Not now,” I said, without looking up.

He went back out. I sat there with the pencil in my hand until the numbers stopped swimming.

I moved the horses before dark.

Seven now, with the Pruitts gone. I took them out of the barn one at a time and turned them into the two big paddocks on the house side, where the yard lights reached and the ground was open and nothing could come at them without crossing fifty yards of floodlit dirt. It was a long job. Whiskey went first so the others would follow her. The gray went last, sulking about it.

Deuce stayed where he was. I stood in his doorway and watched him a while. He watched me back, ears pricked, weight rocked onto his three good feet.

“Sorry, handsome,” I said. “You’re stuck with me.”

He blew on my hand. I gave him an extra carrot and hated myself a little for how much it felt like goodbye. His owner would probably want to come and get him as soon as they heard the gossip too.

The sun went down red over the hills. I was walking back from the barn when I heard Switch’s voice around the corner of the hay barn. Low. On the phone.

I couldn’t have said why I stopped. I stopped.

“No, I’m sure.” A pause. “Once this shit is over, put me on the Gulf run.” Another pause. “The long one, Prez. And whatever comes after it.”

He hung up. I heard him breathe out. Then I came around the corner.

He saw my face and knew I’d heard all of it. He made no move to hide it. He just stood there with the phone in his hand and the last of the light on him.

“You’re doing it again,” I said.

“Doing what?”

“You’re doing it again.” My voice cracked straight down the middle. “You were going to wait till this was all done and then you were going to go. A month? Longer? And then another run after that, and another one, till I got the message.”

“I was going to tell you first.”

“Oh, well. That changes everything.”

He flinched. I’d never seen him flinch.

“Why?” It came out of me raw. “Just tell me why. You owe me that much. Three years and you never told me why, Switch. Tell me why.”

He looked at the ground a long time. When he finally lifted his head, whatever wall he’d been holding up was gone, and what was behind it made my throat close.

“Preacher called before daylight,” he said.

I didn’t understand at first.

“The morning after. You were asleep. I had my arm across you and you were snoring a little, and I was lying there thinking I’d never been this fucking happy in my whole goddamn life and I’d just buried my own father.” His voice was rough and flat and it didn’t stop. “Then my phone went. Club business. A man had hurt one of ours, and it couldn’t wait. I got up and I put my boots on in the dark, and I didn’t wake you because I figured I’d be back before you were up.”

The wind moved in the mesquite. I didn’t breathe.

“By noon I’d done something to that man I’m never going to tell you about. Not ever. I washed him off my hands in a gas station bathroom outside Hachita.” He swallowed. “That night I rode out here. Sat at the end of your drive with the engine off. Your kitchen light was on. You were at the sink with the radio going, and I sat there and watched you through that window for an hour.”

“I heard a bike,” I whispered. “On the road that night. I told myself it wasn’t you.”

“It was me.” His jaw worked. “And I thought about what I’d been doing that morning, and what I’d be doing next month, and the month after that. And I thought about your father looking at mine like he was dirt on his boot. And I thought, she’s built a clean life out here. She doesn’t need a man coming home to her like this.” His eyes came up to mine. “You saw me at that round pen yesterday. That’s the man who’d be coming home to you. Every fucking time.”