I drove away after about ten minutes and I have not been back. The ranch is mine and I spend leave there when I can, and Sheriff Brannock stops by occasionally with his thermos and we watch the valley from the porch without talking much, which is the best kind of company.
My brother texted me in the spring. Not an apology. Just a question about whether I was doing okay. I said yes. He said good. That is the whole of it, and I have decided it is enough to work with, slowly, at a distance, on terms I set.
The pecan pie at that Christmas Eve diner was not very good. I have thought about it many times since, the uneaten slice, the decision I made staring at it, and I think about how the worst nights have a way of being the ones that change everything, if you let them point forward instead of back.
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