I don’t take it.
I say, "What's your business with Mrs. Cross?"
His hand falls. The smile stays. The smile is a trained one—I can see the work behind it the way I can see the work behind a tax filing somebody touched up by hand.
The corners of his eyes are not in on it. "Just checkin' on her. We haven't talked in a while. I was in the area, and I wanted to bring her these."
He holds up the flowers. I look at the flowers. I look past him at the framed photo on his seat. I look back at his face.
I'm going to kill this man.
I don't know the day yet. The place isn't clear, and neither is the method.
But I know it the way I know the tide is going out—it's already in motion, and there's nothing on Earth that's going to change it.
I say, "Mrs. Cross is at her cabin. I'll walk you up."
And, I do.
I don't talk to him. He fills the silence the way men who are nervous fill silence.
Small comments about the property, about the weather, about how nice the cattle are looking. I let him talk.
I clock the cadence of his breathing, the way his right hand keeps adjusting his grip on the flowers, the way his eyes keep flicking past me toward Hadley's cabin like he's been picturing this walk for alongtime.
Hadley is on her porch when we come up the gravel.
She has a glass of sweet tea in her hand.
She must have heard the Explorer roll in. She's standing, not sitting, with her back against the porch rail and the glass held against her chest like a shield.
She sees Todd and her face goes still.
I watch her face the way I'd watch a deer in a clearing. Not staring. Tracking.
She flinches.
It's a flinch so small that anyone who hasn't spent two months watching her wouldn't see it.
The corner of her mouth tightens, her shoulders rise a quarter inch, her eyes go from soft to careful in less than a second.
She catches it before it shows on her whole face.
She's been managing this man for a long time.
She says, even and polite, "Hello, Todd."
He climbs her porch steps and holds out the flowers. "Hadley. Honey. It's been too long."
I almost cringe at the way he sayshoney.
I don’t move from the bottom of the porch steps.
Hadley takes the flowers because she's a woman raised in a Texas household and she'd take flowers from a man pointing a gun at her chest.
She sets them on the porch rail.
Todd holds out the framed photograph. "Brought you something else, too."