“Are you a spy?” I tried to joke. “Is that it? You’d tell me but then you’d have to kill me?”

“I’d tell you and…shit would change.”

“Because you’re rich?”

“Because a lot of things, Layla. A lot of weird, shitty things that I really don’t want to talk about.”

It’s not like I didn’t understand; there were things that if I were to tell him would blow everything apart.

“Okay,” I said.

“Did you see Ben today?”

“He’s fixing something for me.”

“Jesus Christ, Layla! What do I have to do to convince you?”

“Nothing. Nothing. I’m convinced. I didn’t help him. I walked away.”

“Good.”

I put my head in my hands.

“But…he made me cornbread, Dylan.” How does a guy kill two men and make cornbread?

He sighed. “Just because someone can be cruel doesn’t mean they are incapable of kindness.”

“Yes, it does,” I said. The words were out before I could stop them. I didn’t want to talk about Hoyt. I didn’t want to even think about him. His cruelty had left no room for kindness. And the basic decency he’d shown, combined with his calculation, had, in my lowest moments, convinced me he’d been kind. And it had been so easy for him, so easy, because I’d been so starved, so impossibly void of kindness.

I’d been a fool. An easy mark.

Dylan was silent for a long time. “Who hurt you, Layla?”

I stared up at the pocked ceiling of this trailer I’d claimed as my own and the words, the real words—my husband, my husband hurt me—didn’t come. But it’s not like Hoyt was the only one who’d hurt me. My mom had unknowingly spent years tenderizing me for Hoyt. Teaching me to be small and to be scared.

“My mom was…not well. Mentally. Not really.”

“Like what?”

“You don’t want to talk about this—”

“Let me be the judge of that. What was wrong with your mom?”

“I’m not sure. It’s not like she went to the doctor. Or like we ever really talked about it. She was real paranoid and she’d go through these weeks when she’d be…just furious. The world wasn’t right. And everyone was coming after her. And then it would go away and she’d be…sad. Hard to get out of bed some days.”

“Jesus.”

“It was what it was, you know? I learned how to stay out of her way when she was mad, and how to try and cheer her up when she was sad, and I learned how to work…like so fucking hard all the time in the hopes that she wouldn’t be either. It never worked, but I kept trying.”

“Where was your dad?”

“Not around and not talked about. Not ever.” I closed my eyes, the past, its mistakes, so close I could touch them. I could hold them in my hand where they burned and hurt. I deserved this…the pain over this was one I shouldn’t have been shoving away.

“There…there was one man, Smith.”

And suddenly, I felt tears burning behind my eyes.

Oh, I wasn’t sure I could talk about this. I’d never talked about Smith and what I’d done to him. I’d actually managed to stop thinking about him; in the constant triage of my life, I’d been able to push this awful thing out of my mind, but now it was here.

From the moment I’d met Ben, Smith had started to haunt me.

“Layla?”

My hands were shaking and my stomach hurt and the regrets on my shoulders were so big and so awful I couldn’t pretend anymore. What I did to him, I could no longer hide from.

“He worked on the ranch most of my life and he was kind of a father to me. Taught me how to change tires and shoot a gun. We used to play chess at night on the porch in the summer and he’d never let me win. Not ever. So when I finally beat him, it was like…” I smiled, remembering how I’d done this victory lap around the porch and Mom and Smith had laughed. “A big deal.”

“Sounds like a good guy.”

“He was the best. The best guy. And I think my mother loved him. As much as she was capable of that stuff.”

That was my best guess. My best understanding through the filter of my strange childhood. Mom loved him, this virile cowboy, a former marine.

There were rumors in town that he used to drink, or that he’d had some dark past, and every once in a while some woman at church would get brave and ask Mom if she thought it was such a good idea to have a man like Smith out at the farm where we were so isolated. So alone.

Mom ignored those women.

I, of course, had no idea what those women were talking about. Smith was…Smith. With the rusty teasing and the broken-up hand and the up-at-dawn work ethic.

He was silent and steady.

He would never have hurt me. Hurt us.

And I crushed him. Kicked him out of that house, out of the only home he’d ever known.

“Did he love her?”

“I don’t know. He must have felt something for her to stick around…”

“Maybe he loved you. Thought of you like a daughter.”

My breath was broken and sharp and hurt inside my body.

“I think…I think you’re right.”

Smith had stood behind me at Mom’s funeral, his hand on my shoulder. Holding me up when I wanted to fall down.

Don’t marry that boy, he’d said when Hoyt and I announced our engagement.

It’s fine, I’d said. We’re in love, I’d said. Hoyt’s a good man, I’d said.

“He’s the man I fired,” I told Dylan. “After Mom died, there was another…person who started helping me with the farm and I…I was convinced I had to fire Smith.”

Oh, it was awful to remember. A sickening day.

Hoyt convinced me—I don’t remember what words he used, what argument he could offer that would turn me against the one person in my entire life I could count on. My only friend. All I remembered was his hands around my wrist, holding me so hard I thought the bones would break. Like he’d just grind them to dust.

“Annie,” Smith said. “I can’t leave you here alone. I can’t.”

“I’m not alone, Smith. I’m married, and my husband and I are making some changes.”

“You regret it?” Dylan asked.

Regret, God. What a tame word. What a silly cage for all the awfulness I felt about Smith.

“When I think about it, I want to throw up,” I said.

Who knows how different my life would have been if I hadn’t fired Smith? I would have had help. Support. Hoyt would never have been able to sell that land. To hurt me.

And that’s why Hoyt convinced me that Smith had to leave. Because he knew.

“Do you know where he is?” Dylan asked.

“He had a sister in Wyoming. That’s all I knew. I…I made a point of not knowing.” Because I was a coward.

He made a low, rumbling sound of dissent. Like he had some problem with that, of my making a point of not knowing.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing, baby. It’s late, and hangovers have a way of bringing out all the garbage. Go to sleep. Things will be better in the morning.”

I had my doubts that anything would be better in the morning.

The next morning the tractor was fixed and parked just outside the shed. Ben had changed the oil, too. And at the end of the day, Kevin shuffled out to the field to pay me for my third week of work.

“I didn’t see you yesterday,” he said, giving me the envelope with the small amount of cash tucked inside. The rest paid the rent on my trailer.

“I wasn’t feeling very well.”

“Yeah, I heard about your little party. Next time—”

“Keep it down. We will.” If there was a next time. The one-two punch of Bebe and the kids being gone seemed like a pretty rare event. And frankly, I wasn’t entirely sure I could survive another night like that.