Page 75 of The Naughty Ex

"They've got a lot of vans."

"They do."

"Benny's people are seeing to the guests, and there is an obscene quantity of sea bass. Rhoda and I have decided we'll let those people eat it, get drunk, and go home, and we'll hide down here." Harold looked around the cottage. "In our own guest house. Hiding."

"That is the correct decision," said Benny from the doorway. "It's going to be awkward up there."

Then Rhoda saw Billy.

I watched it happen. She'd been focused entirely on her son, and then her head came around and she saw a man in jeans with a duffel bag standing by the door, and it took her a moment to reconcile it.

"Zephyr."

"Rhoda."

"You're—" she gestured at all of him "—you're in trousers."

"I am."

"Are you leaving?"

"Yes."

"But you can't." She crossed the room and took his hands. I want to be clear that she was still crying from the meadow, so she came to him already wrecked. "Not tonight. Zephyr, not tonight, look at us. Look at my son. Something enormous has happened in that field and I don't know what any of it means and you have to—"

"Rhoda."

"—you have to tell me what it means."

And Billy Truman stood in a doorway in a T-shirt with a bag at his feet and looked at that woman for a long moment.

"Your son said the true thing out loud in front of everybody," he said. "That's all that happened today. The rest of it is furniture being moved."

Her hands tightened on his.

"But is he going to be all right?"

"I don't know. Nobody does." He glanced, briefly, at Blaine in the chair. "But he's the only person on this property who hasn't lied to you this week, and I'd hold on to that."

Nobody said anything.

He got the bag up onto his shoulder.

"Zephyr—"

"Billy," he said.

Rhoda blinked at him. "Sorry?"

"Nothing. It's a name I used to answer to." He put a hand flat over his own heart. "Be kind to yourselves. All of you. It's cheaper than the alternative."

Then he turned around and walked out.

Rhoda turned to me with her mouth open.

"What did he mean, a name he used to—"

"He's very tired," I mumbled.