“Ask.”
“Is there . . . ?” She paused, considering her words. “Does this trip somehow involve . . . another woman? Someone you knew—someone you were with before me?”
“There’s no other woman. You’re the only one I’ve ever said the words to.”
Her apprehensions faded, and she nodded. “Then you take care of what you need to take care of. And be careful.”
“I will. I’ll see you in bed in a bit.”
Oswell kissed his wife on the mouth and walked out of the room; he loathed himself with a violence that he had not felt in years.
The moon was a clipped fingernail adrift in a field of cotton, illuminating the rancher and the porch that he knelt upon with blue light. Oswell slid the grooved claw of his hammer around a raised nail head, adjusted his grip, and pressed his hands forward. With a creak l
