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Owen didn't say anything for a second.

"That's all I can do about it," he said.

"No, it isn't." She let that sit. "Everything you have ever given me you handed over a fence. The bull. The catalogs. Mama's fence line. My own horse. Every bit of it came across something, and you were on the far side of it every time, and here you stand with a board in front of you."

"I'm not going to argue about the board."

"You've never argued about a thing in your life. You wait, and people give up, and you call it peace." She was crying again and it didn't matter now. "It's tomorrow, Owen. Ten o'clock at Greene's. I sign my mother's house away in the morning and you’ve brought me a sign."

"I know what day it is."

"Then you know it's late."

"Yes." He looked at her. "I'm not asking you for anything."

"No," she said. "You never do."

She saw it get him.

"You wrote it down," she said.

He took that one too, with her horse's lead still in his fist.

She went up the steps. She got the screen open and her hand on the wooden door behind it and she did not turn around, because if she turned around she was going down those steps, and then she'd be a woman who came running the day a man finally wrote it down.

She shut the door.

She stood on the inside of it with her hand still on the knob. She could hear him out there, not leaving.

She watched from the kitchen window with the tap running so her mother wouldn't ask.

He stayed a long time. He stood out in the yard at the horse's head with his hat off and looked at the house. He didn't come up and he didn't call out. After a while he tied the lead to the gate. He got a bucket, filled it at the hydrant, and set it where the horse could reach it, because whatever else was wrong with the man, he’d never left an animal standing without water.

Her mother came in behind her at some point and stood there and looked out too.

"Is that Duke?"

"Yes."

"What's that on him?"

"A board."

"I can see it's a board, Olivia. What's written on it."

She didn't answer. Edna looked at the yard a while longer with her hands on the back of a chair that was going to Midland.

"He's got a good clear hand on him," she said.

"Mama."

"I'm not saying a word. You'll notice I've not said one." Edna got her cane under her and turned for the hall. She stopped at the doorway. "That horse'll want putting up before dark."

"I know it."

"I'm only telling you he'll want putting up."

Then he got in his truck and went, and an hour later the sun was off the yard and Duke was still standing at the gate with the board wired to his saddle.