Out in Ogden County, at the Red & Black, Edward hung up the receiver on the wall by the kitchen just as Shelby came through the cottage’s main door. She was freshly showered, her hair drying across her shoulders, her jeans clean, her short-sleeved shirt blue and white checked.

“What?” she said as she saw his face.

“I’m sorry?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

He shook his head. “I’m not. But listen, I want to go out for dinner. And I want you to come with me.”

When she just blinked at him, he rolled his eyes. “Fine. I’ll be more polite. Please. Come eat with me. I would greatly appreciate your company.”

“No, it’s not that.” She patted her shirt. “I’m not dressed for anything fancy.”

“Neither am I, and I’m in the mood for good chicken. So we should go to Joella’s.”

Limping over to the door, he opened the panels wide. “Are you up for it? Six levels of spice, and each one is a taste of heaven—and that isn’t blasphemy.”

“Do you want to be asking Moe?”

“Nah, I just want you. To come eat with me, that is.”

As he indicated the great outdoors, there was a pause … and then Shelby went out first. When she passed by him, he breathed in deep and had to smile a little. She smelled like old-fashioned Prell shampoo, and he wondered where she had gotten the stuff. Did they even make it anymore? Maybe it was a leftover of her father’s, or perhaps it had been abandoned by the previous occupant of that apartment she stayed in over at Barn B.

Before Edward followed her out, he snagged the cash he’d left on the corner of the bureau the night Sutton had come and he’d mistaken her for—

Stopping that little cascade of memories, he closed the cottage door and looked up to the sky. For a moment, he paused to measure the wide expanse and the gradation of color from the banked ember glow of the sunset at the west to the velvet blue of early night in the east. Inhaling deeply once again, he smelled the sweet grass and the good earth and something vaguely charcoal-y as if Moe and Joey were grilling burgers out behind a barn.

The feel of the still air on his skin was a kind of benediction.

Strange that he hadn’t appreciated it all. And that had been true even when he had been out in the world.

Back then, he had been so focused on work, the company, the competition.

And afterward, he had been mired in too much pain and too much bitterness.

So many missed opportunities.

“Edward?” Shelby said.

“Coming.”

Approaching her truck, he went around and opened her door, and though she seemed unfamiliar with the gesture or the idea she would be driven somewhere, she hopped up into the passenger seat. Then he limped in a circle and got behind the wheel.

Starting the engine, he backed out and headed toward town. At first, there were only a few other vehicles on the road with them and he even had to go around a tractor that was putting along at the shoulder. But soon there were proper cars and even some stoplights.

As they came into the suburbs proper, he found himself looking all around, noting changes to storefronts. Neighborhoods. He recognized new styles of cars. Billboards. Plantings on the medians and—

“Oh, my God, they got rid of the White Castle.”

“What you say?”

He pointed to a perfectly anonymous new building that housed a bank. “There used to be a White Castle right there. Forever. I went there when I was young on my bike. I’d save up my allowance and buy sliders for my brothers and me. I had to sneak them into the house because I never wanted Miss Aurora to feel like we didn’t love her food. Which we did. But I enjoyed, you know, getting them something that made ’em happy. Gin never ate even one of them. She started worrying about getting fat when she was three.”

Edward kept quiet about the fact that the trips usually came after their father had gotten the belt out. Nine times out of ten, Max was the one who got that ball rolling, whether it was setting fireworks off from the roof of the garage, or riding a horse in through Easterly’s front door, or taking one of the family cars and going four-by-fouring in the cornfields down below the hill.

He smiled a little to himself. Certainly, in other households, that last one might not have been that big a deal. Rolls-Royces, however, though superior automobiles all the way around, were engineered to go to opera openings and polo matches. Not to try to harvest August corn.

God, he could still picture that brand-new 1995 Corniche IV with a snaggle-toothed grille full of husks and stalks. William Baldwine had been far less than amused to find his new toy ruined—and Max hadn’t been able to sit down for a week afterward.

To clear that part of the memory out of the way, he said, “I was pretty impressed with what you did last night.”

Shelby looked over. Looked away. “Neb’s not so bad. He wants to be in charge and he’ll prove it if he has to. Your best bet is to work with him, not to try to get him to do what you want.”

Edward laughed—and Shelby’s head snapped back around. As she just stared at him, he said, “What?”

“I’ve never heard you … well, anyway.”

“Laugh? Yes, you’re probably right. But tonight is different. I feel like a weight is off my shoulders.”

“Because Neb’s going to be okay? Those were just superficial cuts, and them front legs’ll be all right. It could’ve been worse.”

“Thanks to you.”

“Don’t mean nothing.”

“You know … I love that stallion. I can remember when I bought him. It was right after I got out of the rehab hospital here. I was in so much pain.” Edward stopped at a light by a big white church with a brass steeple. “My right leg felt like it was breaking over and over again, every time I put weight on it. And I’d been on so many opiates, my digestive tract had completely shut down.” As things went green, he hit the gas and glanced over. “TMI, but opiate-induced constipation is nearly as bad as whatever you’re taking the drugs for. God, I had never before appreciated basic bodily functions. No one does. You walk around in these bags of flesh that are vehicles for our gray matter, taking it all for granted when nothing is wrong, bitching about work and how hard it is, or—”

Edward did a double take on his passenger: Shelby was still staring across the seat at him, and so help her God, her jaw was totally lax.