Chapter 30: What Came After

Ward left the ranch at six o'clock that evening.

The sheriff had let him go home with a date to appear Monday, and his lawyer's number written on a napkin.

Nobody on the lawn had eaten.

The caterers stood with their serving spoons, and the band sat on the stage with their guitars across their knees.

Ward carried two suitcases out of the big house himself.

He put them in the bed of the white truck, one at a time.

The foreman stood at the gate with his arms folded.

He didn't say a word, and he didn't open the gate until Lorna told him to.

She stood on the porch in her blue dress.

"The Billings house is in your name," she said. "My lawyer will call yours."

"Lorna."

"You'll hear it from him."

Ward looked up at her for a long moment, with his hat in his hand.

"Forty years," he said.

"Yes."

"You told me to pay her."

"I told you to pay her and keep your mouth shut, and you did one of those things." Lorna didn't raise her voice. "Go on."

The white truck went through the gate and down the road.

It left a long plume of dust over the hay field.

When it was gone, three hundred people let out a sound that wasn't quite a cheer.

I sat down on the porch step with my boots in the dirt.

I was so tired I could feel my pulse in my teeth.

Lorna lowered herself onto the step above me, slowly, holding the rail.

She didn't say anything for a while.

The crew had started carrying chairs back to the flatbed, and the cook was already slicing brisket for anyone who would take a plate.

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