“I know.”
“Why didn’t you scream at me?”
“I was too tired to start.”
He laughed, a broken, wet sound, and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me.”
“I’m not offering that. Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.” I stood. “But I’m offering something. Tom asked me to give you a way back, and I’m going to. There’s a condition.”
He looked up.
“You’ll come to the ranch on Saturday. You’ll work. You’ll help Ben haul the last of the bales to the winter pasture, and you’ll feed with him, and you’ll do it every Saturday until the first of the year, without being asked and without being paid. And you’ll go to Arlen and Gene and the Reyes couple and tell each of them the truth, in your own words.”
“I will.”
“You’ll apologize to Ben. He’s the one you’ve hurt most. He’s seventeen, and he watched his uncle steal from his mother the week his father died.”
Dwayne closed his eyes.
“I will,” he whispered.
“Good.” I picked up my coat. “Then we’ll see what comes after that.”
He came the next Saturday at six in the morning, in a pair of stiff new coveralls, with a thermos and a shamefaced expression. Ben was in the barn. I watched from the kitchen window as the two of them stood facing each other in the cold gray light, my son tall and rigid, my brother-in-law stooped and hat in hand.
I couldn’t hear what Dwayne said. It took him a long time. Ben stood motionless through all of it, his arms crossed, his jaw set. When it was over, there was a pause that went on and on. A cow bawled in the lot. The wind lifted the corner of the tarp on the machine shed.
