Chapter 6: Not Sitting Down

Floyd's POV

My brother found me in the barn at nine on Wednesday night, sitting on a feed bucket with my phone in my hand.

I had been trying one number for an hour. It was the lab's, off the bottom of a report I had never read.

It rang and rang, then went to a recording that said nothing but a beep.

"You look like hell," my brother said.

"Thanks."

"I'm going to say something and you won't like it." He leaned on the stall door.

"I held that baby at Christmas. He has your ear, genius."

"Dad's lawyer says paper beats ears."

"Dad's lawyer is a man who bills in six-minute pieces." He pushed off the door.

"I laughed at her at the table, Floyd. I've been sick about it ever since."

He went back to the house.

I sat there another minute. Then I stood up, because I had finally run out of excuses.

The drive to Kerrville took an hour and ten minutes.

Her aunt's farmhouse had one light on over the porch, and a white pickup in the yard that had been there since I was twenty-six.

I knocked.

The aunt opened the door and stood in it, in a flannel robe.

A shotgun leaned against the frame, within reach of her left hand.

"Well," she said. "Look what the ranch dragged in."

"Ma'am. I'd like to talk to my wife."

"Would you." She looked me up and down, and I let her.

"She's in the kitchen. If I hear her cry, I'm coming back in with this."

"Yes, ma'am."

Emme was sitting at the table with Eli asleep against her chest.

She had her hair in a low ponytail. She looked thinner. She looked up, and she did not say a word.

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