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"She's better than I was braced for," Stephanie said. "Considerably." Her eyes went down the steps to where his father was folding Lauren's hand into both of his, warm as Christmas, saying something that made her laugh. "Don't be careless, Mason."

"With what?"

But she'd already put the polish back on and stepped past him into the goodnights, and he stood on his parents' porch in the cold with the pond lights burning out in the dark, and could not for the life of him tell whether his mother had just blessed him or warned him, and was afraid of every answer.

The letter was waiting in Wednesday's mail.

He was at her stove when she went through the stack, rain finally coming in gray off the plains and the kitchen warm against it, supper half-made, the radio low, one of those ordinary evenings that had assembled itself around them so fast neither of them remarked on it anymore. Bill, bill, a seed catalog still addressed to her grandfather, and then a heavy cream envelope with GREENE & ASSOCIATES in the corner, and she opened it with a butter knife and read it standing at the table.

"Estate's nearly settled," she reported, scanning. "Title's recording, taxes are what taxes are, there's a thing about the water rights I'll need him to translate from lawyer." She turned the page. "Huh."

"Hm?"

"'In the course of settling the estate we note a standing expression of interest in the property, the party preferring to remain unnamed at this stage. Should you elect to sell at any point, please advise this office and we will facilitate contact.'" She read it twice, he watched her read it twice, and then she looked up with half a laugh. "Somebody's been wanting this place since before I even got here. Standing interest. Who has standing interest in a hundred and sixty acres of fixer-upper?"

The kitchen was very warm and the rain ran on the window and Mason stood at her stove with a wooden spoon in his hand and his father's fingerprints all over the paper on her table, and the moment opened in front of him like a gate.

Now. Right now, this exact minute, the letter had done half his work for him, the subject was standing in the room with its hat in its hand. I know who it is. It's my father. He's wanted the ground under your feet since before your grandfather was buried, and he sent me down here to be charming about it, and I told him no the first morning, and I should have told you the second one. Four sentences and the rain to cover the silence after. She was watching him, even. Waiting on his answer to the question she thought was rhetorical.

"Out here," Mason said, "everything's spoken for twice over. Water, grass, minerals under it. Folks keep lists of land they'd buy if it ever came loose. It's not personal."

Which was true. Every word of it was true, and it was the most dishonest thing he'd ever said in his life, and he said it stirring supper, in her kitchen, with her grandfather's skillet in his hand.

"Well, they can keep their list." She folded the letter back into its envelope, unbothered, and dropped it in the wooden tray by the bread box where he'd watched the phone bill and the co-op statement go before it, the tray of things that could wait. "Everything's after the wedding. The taxes, the water rights, the mystery list-keeper. I have a dress situation to resolve and Ainsley's coming about the flowers next week." She came across the kitchen and hooked her fingers into his belt loops and looked up at him, warm and easy and his, standing four feet from the letter. "What's for supper, cowboy?"

The silence had changed species. He felt it happen, right there between the stove and the bread box. A month it had been a thing he hadn't said, a door he hadn't opened, and that was its own sin but a quiet one. Now his father's want was sitting in her wooden tray in writing, folded up under a phone bill, and she'd asked the question straight out, to his face, and he'd answered with a fact and let it work like a lie. There was a word for a man who did that. Several. None of them were going to make him say the four sentences tonight, with her fingers in his belt loops and the wedding ten days out and the rain coming down like a curtain on the whole world.

After the wedding. In ten days she'd stand up in that church and watch Dean get the reward for telling the truth, and Sunday, Sunday for real this time, he'd sit her down at this table and hand her the whole of it, and whatever she did to him then, he'd have earned twice over.

"Chicken and whatever was in the crisper," he said. "Fair warning, I cook like a bachelor."

"Good thing you're not one anymore."

She said it light, tossing it over her shoulder on her way to set the table, no weight on it at all, and it went into him deeper than anything his mother had said on the porch. He turned the burner down and watched her lay two places at the table where the letter had been, easy in her kitchen, easy with him.

They ate supper. They washed up. They went to bed early with the rain still on the roof, and made love slow and half-laughing in the lamplight, unhurried, his mouth at her shoulder and her hands lazy in his hair, her body familiar to him now the way the road home was familiar and twice as good to travel, and after, she fell asleep mid-sentence about the wedding flowers with her hand curled on his chest.

Mason lay in the dark and listened to the rain, and held her.

Like a man buying time. He knew exactly what it looked like, because it was exactly what it was, and the rain ran down out of the dark all night, spending it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The Saturday before the wedding, Harvey's had a band, same as every Saturday, and the county came out for it like a dress rehearsal for the following week. By eight the gravel lot was full to the fence line. By nine the dance floor was packed rail to rail, boots and skirts and the band up on the low stage playing like they were being paid by the mile, and the corner booth had been claimed since seven by a coalition of women who had, apparently, adopted Lauren Merritt as a founding cause.

She'd come with Mason. That was its own event now, arriving with him, his hand at the small of her back through the door and half the room noting it with the satisfaction of shareholders, and she'd braced for the attention and then found, to her real surprise, that it didn't itch anymore. Somewhere between an auction and a hen night the county had finished deciding, and a decided county quit staring and just made room.

The circle had her before Mason even got his hat hung.

"There she is." Remi, already flushed from the floor, hauled her into the booth by the wrist. Lara and Elena were wedged in with Addi between them, and Ainsley presided at the end with a pitcher she'd clearly bought for the table, and the music was loud enough that everything had to be half-shouted, which suited the content. "We've been here an hour. Addi's already on first names with the whole band. Elena danced already, voluntarily, we have witnesses."

"It was one song," Elena said.

"It was two songs and the second one had turns in it." Remi poured Lauren a beer without asking. "Wedding report: one week out. The flowers are ordered, the church is booked so solid Pearl's turning away funerals, and Helen has entered the stage where she cries at forks. We're all pretending not to notice."

"Where's the bride's composure?" Lauren asked Lara.

"Filed somewhere safe," Lara said serenely. "I'll pick it up Saturday morning."