“Want to try it?”

I nodded and took the napkin, still so hot I shifted the little flower from hand to hand so my fingers didn’t burn.

He lifted the other flower out and put it down on his knee.

“Doesn’t that hurt?” I asked.

“Nah.” He held out his palms and I could see the thick calluses on all his fingers. Three fingers on his left hand reminded me of Smith’s hand. They looked like they’d been broken and not set properly.

I blew on the flower and then finally bit into it. It was stuffed with a little bit of cheese, and as I pulled the flower away a long string of it came down and scorched my chin. My tongue was singed.

“Ouch. Ow. Wow.”

“Tenderfoot,” he muttered and tossed his flower into his mouth. He chewed contemplatively. “Not quite.”

I finished mine. It was cheesy and fried, which made it pretty damn great. “That was delicious.”

“My ex’s was better,” he muttered.

From a bowl beside his chair he pulled out jalapeño peppers he’d sliced in half, added them to the still-bubbling oil, and put the whole thing back in the fireplace.

“Are you going to just eat those?”

“Fried peppers? No, I’m going to make cornbread. My wife used to put peppers in hers.”

“You’re a really good cook,” I said. He was thinking about his wife and he seemed sad, staring into that half-finished oven. I wished I knew some way to comfort him. Leach away some of this loss he was so clearly feeling.

He shook his head. “Well, I can’t drink, I can’t smoke. Don’t ride no more. Friends are in jail or dead. This is what I got left.”

“You don’t have any family?”

He pursed his lips, staring into the fire as if trying to remember, and then he shook his head. “Nah. My old lady left years ago. Went west to her sister’s.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, responding more to the grief he couldn’t quite hide under those words.

He shrugged. “It’s done business, I suppose.”

“You don’t have any kids?” I asked. I rubbed at some dirt on my elbow, carefully not watching him. I wanted someone—Dylan or Ben—to tell me that they were related, that Ben was Dylan’s father. Otherwise, I didn’t know why Dylan wanted Ben watched.

“Why are you being so nosey?” he asked.

“I can’t drink, can’t smoke. This is all I’ve got left,” I joked. He smiled into the fire.

“No. No family.” He reached into the kiln with his fork to poke at the peppers.

That killed my theory that Dylan was his son. I’d been so sure.

“You took off your scarf.”

I resisted the impulse to hide the bruises with my hands. “I don’t think I was fooling anyone.”

“No,” he agreed. “Your daddy do that? The bruises.”

“Husband.”

“No shit. I thought you’re too young for that kind of stupidity.”

“That kind of stupidity is made for the young.”

It felt oddly crowded around this fire. Like we had all our ghosts with us.

“He didn’t start off mean,” I felt compelled to explain it to him. Maybe to myself. To Joan. I’d never put any of it into words, never looked at how Hoyt had managed to isolate and hurt me so effectively. How I’d let him.

“They never do,” he said, staring into the fire.

“I suppose you’re right. My…mom died, and I was really young and I suddenly found myself alone and in charge of a farm. Mom never taught me about payroll or taxes, or how much credit we had at the grain elevator or who we owed money to. I was in so far over my head, I had no idea what to do. And Hoyt started to help me. Told me he’d take care of things at the grain elevator. Helped me pay bills and talk to people at the bank. He’d been working there a few years already, and he just kind of came up alongside of me so I didn’t have to be so alone. And he seemed…solid, you know? And interested. In me. Like…that.” I’d been able to feel him watching me. His eyes under that hat made me blush. Made me…aware. That and a few polite howdys and I’d…God, I’d been so easy.

“Interested in your land, more likely.”

And yes, wasn’t that just a stunning assessment of my appeal?

“Yes, in the end, I guess, that was true. But I believed he was interested in me. And I was lonely.”

“You didn’t have no one else telling you he was suspicious?”

“One man,” I said. “Smith. Our…foreman, I guess.” Smith and his relationship to Mom and to me and the land kind of defied description. “He warned me that Hoyt was bad news.”

“Smart man.”

“You remind me of him. Of Smith.”

Ben looked up, startled at that. “Well, that’s a mistake. I’m not smart, or I wouldn’t be put out to pasture here.”

“Still,” I said, smiling at Ben. “You two are a lot alike.”

“I guess I’m supposed to take that as a compliment?”

“Yep.” Smith had been the best man I knew, despite the rumors about him. Despite…what I’d done to him.

“Fine.” Oh, Ben was so crusty, it made me laugh.

The jalapeños popped in the grease.

“You stay away from that fuckwit Phil,” he said. “In the double-wide by the laundry. He’s bad business. He’d hurt you and not think twice about it.”

“He was here last night, nearly ruined his son’s birthday party, but Joan stepped in,” I said. “Our neighbor—”

“Oh, I know Joan. And that crazy bitch would do something so stupid.”

I bristled at the name and Ben’s tone. “I thought it was pretty courageous.”

Ben’s eyes lifted to the bruises around my neck and then quickly away.

“Sometimes I miss Maria more than I can stand,” he said. “I wake up at night so lonely it’s like someone chopped off my leg. And then I remember how shitty we were together. How we hurt each other over and over. How much I fucked up, and I think it’s probably better this way. Better to be alone.”

I’d had that same thought just the other day, but somehow it was lonelier when he said it.

He wasn’t a dangerous sociopath. He was a lonely old man trying to re-create something from happier days.

“Thanks for the zucchini flower,” I said. “And for listening, I guess.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll save you some cornbread.”

After my shower I lay down on my bed, the cell phone in my hand. But somehow I couldn’t quite turn it on.

I’d had dessert for breakfast. I’d gone skinny-dipping.

I’d expected anticipation and lust and the throb between my legs and the tightness of my skin.

But somehow the world seemed like it was just too heavy a place right now. All the hard edges were out tonight and I felt each one of them.

I turned the phone on and a text message appeared from earlier in the day.

Dylan: I’m really hoping you found yourself some pie for breakfast…

I smiled, and despite the melancholy, something dark ignited low in my body.

Annie: I did. Well, cake. And I went skinny-dipping this afternoon.

I didn’t expect him to write back right away, but within a minute his answer appeared on the screen.

Dylan: You gonna call me?

Annie: It was kind of a weird day…and night.

Dylan: Call me.

There really wasn’t any question. We were doing this his way. And my way left me alone in my bed and sad. His way I got to call him and maybe…maybe come against my hand.

I called him.

“Layla?” Oh, his voice. His voice just killed me. Part drawl, part growl.

“Hi.”

“You all right?”

I took a deep breath, trying to keep the strange comfort of his worry at arm’s length. “I’m fine.”

“What happened?”

“It’s a long story…”

“You got something else to do?” he asked.

“No.”

“Me neither. Might as well tell me.”

I flung an arm out across the bed. Night was falling outside the trailer. I could hear the sounds of the kids on the other side of the rhododendron playing at the swing set. Someone somewhere was grilling hamburgers.

“This…is just kind of a sad place, is all. Sad people.”

“And you’re feeling sad?”

“Not very sexy, is it?” I said with a little laugh. “How about I call you—”