“I know.”
“He’s frightened of you. Did you know that?”
I hadn’t.
“He thinks you’ll take the place away. That you’ll sell it and leave him with nothing. He’s never owned an acre in his life, and he’s fifty-six.” She shook her head slowly. “Tom should have given him a share. I told him so. But Tom said Dwayne would only sell it.”
“Tom was probably right.”
“Probably. But it left a splinter.” She looked at me, and her eyes were Tom’s eyes, pale gray and steady. “I don’t ask you to forgive him. I only ask that you don’t slam the door.”I thought about the letter, folded in my coat.
Give him a way back.
“I won’t slam it,” I said.
I went to see Dwayne on a Sunday afternoon in October, when the first cold front had come through and the cottonwoods were turning yellow along the creek. He lived in a neat gray house with a three-car garage and a flag on the porch. A boat sat in the driveway, covered in a blue tarp.
