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“You were born to run your mouth,” Jett said. “Throw.”

Knox threw. The horseshoe went up beautiful and came down eleven feet short into the creek, and the whole line of tailgates gave it what it deserved. Jett held out his hand, Knox slapped a bill into it and said “Best of seven,” and the afternoon was underway.

Olivia got a bowl of chili into her hands and a spot on Lauren’s tailgate with the sun on her back, and for a while it was easy. It was the same party this crowd had been throwing at this creek since before any of them could legally attend it, the fire, the trucks, the give-and-take, only now Mason sat with a florist under his arm, Brody had gray coming in at his temples, and her own place had a sign at the gate. Nobody said one word about the sign. They’d all decided that without a meeting, the whole pack of them. She ate her chili and loved every fool present and did not look down the line of trucks to where Owen was splitting deadfall with Chase like the party had hired them.

Owen had nodded at her when she got out of the van. A nod, from the length of the party, from a man whose forearm she could still feel against her wrist eight days later, and since then he’d kept the length of the party between them, and careful was the whole problem, and she was not going to think about it this afternoon.

“He knows about the wedding,” Lauren said.

Olivia surfaced. “What?”

“Knox. He knows the song thing’s about his toast.” Lauren was watching the cooler negotiations with the calm of a woman who’d catered worse. “Mason says he cried, denied it, and threatened the deejay.”

“That’s the most Knox story I ever heard.”

“I’ve got better ones now. I’ve been collecting.” Lauren tipped her bowl at the crowd, easy, and Olivia thought, again, that the best thing to come out of the whole Royston circus in years was sitting on this tailgate handing out chili. “Your kids do anything good this week?”

“Dalton Pruitt told the class his uncle wrestles alligators for the government.”

“Does he?”

“He installs septic tanks. I had to write a note home asking the family to align their stories, because I now have nineteen children who want the alligator unit.”

“What did the note say?”

“Dear Pruitt family. Please settle on one occupation for Uncle Randy. The curriculum cannot keep up.”

Lauren laughed her whole laugh, and down the line Remi won the music war, and the music started over.

Remi came by handing out brownies off a cooler lid. “Liv. Tell me you brought the pickles.”

“In the van, door pocket.”

“You’re the only person I know who can be trusted.” She sat down on the tailgate between them, ate half a brownie, and surveyed her own party like she owned it. “Look at him. Home a week and he’s already holding court. I cried at the feed store after he left, and he gets to sit there like none of us ever suffered.” She pointed the other half of the brownie at Olivia. “Don’t tell him.”

“I’d never.”

“I know. It’s why you’re on pickle duty. You’re the only person I know who can be trusted,” Remi said again, and went off to police the fire.

A while after that, crossing behind the pitching line at exactly the wrong moment, Olivia got moved. A hand closed on her elbow from behind and walked her two feet left, out of Knox’s airspace, and was gone before the horseshoe landed. She didn’t have to turn around. She’d been getting moved out of harm’s way by that hand for three weeks now, in alleys and gate lines and now at a party. It never lingered and it never missed, and it was becoming its own quiet problem, because her body had started leaning into the catch a half second before it came.

Ainsley came and found her at the fire with two beers and that level look she’d had since she was nine years old.

“I want to buy Duke,” she said.

Olivia stood holding a beer she suddenly didn’t want and made herself take a slow swallow of it anyway. “I haven’t put him up yet.”

“I know. I’d rather get there before whoever you’d let have him.” Ainsley turned her bottle once in her fingers, the only nerves she ever showed. “I’ve ridden him. He’s honest, he’s cowy, and he doesn’t hold a grudge past supper, which is more than I can say for anything else on our place. Name it and I’ll pay it.”

“He’s fourteen, Ainsley.”

“Then name fourteen-year-old money and I’ll pay a hundred over.”

“Ainsley.”

“He knows me,” Ainsley said. “That’s worth a hundred.”

The fire popped. Somewhere behind her a horseshoe went into the creek again to a roar of scorekeeping, and Olivia stood in the firelight and sold one more piece of her life to somebody she loved, and thanked her for it. Duke was the last horse her daddy ever started. She’d fed him first for eleven years, ridden him when there was time, told him things she told nobody, and June was coming for him the same as for everything else, and here stood the one person in two families she’d have picked, offering before she’d had to ask.