The metal is warm.
Marlena sees my hand move. She doesn't say anything about it.
"He's been good to Nash," I tell her. "Rogue."
"He's been good to you, too."
I don't answer that one and she doesn't push.
We sit with it for a long minute.
Cal stirs against her chest, makes a small wet noise in his sleep, settles.
The hawk is gone from the sky. Somewhere out past the bunkhouse a dog yips once and another one answers back.
Marlena says, "You don't have to decide anything today. Don't have to decide anything this week. But that man—whatever you're workin' out, he worked out two months ago. He's been waiting for you to catch up, sweetheart. That's all I'm gonna say."
She pats my knee, hands me her empty lemonade glass and stands up slowly with Cal still asleep against her.
"I'll be back next week. Phantom likes those gingersnaps you made. I'm hoping you'll make 'em again if I bring you the molasses."
"I'll make them, don’t you worry."
"I was praying you would."
She gives me a look like a friend would when she’s trying to encourage you to step out of your comfort zone, and then she steps off my porch and crosses the gravel back toward the main house.
I sit on the swing for a long time after she's gone, my hand staying on the chain.
I head to the bunkhouse at eleven-thirty to start lunch.
Thunder's already there.
He's pulling cans of sweet tea out of the cooler and he's got his cut hung on the hook by the door, whistling some country song I half-recognize but can't quite place. "Cross."
"Thunder."
"What're we feedin' the troops?"
"Chicken salad on homemade rolls. Tomatoes from your mama's garden, the ones she dropped off yesterday. Pickles from the jar I put up. Sweet tea."
"Lord have mercy."
"Don't take the Lord's name in vain in my kitchen."
"That waspraise, Cross. That was aprayer."
I roll my eyes, he laughs and steals a tomato off my cutting board, and I smack his hand with the wooden spoon I keep on the counter just for this purpose.
"Ow!"
"Don't touch a damn thing."
"You assaulted me."
"I disciplined you. There's a difference."
He pops the tomato in his mouth anyway and grins around it, and I shake my head and go back to mixing the chicken salad.