She giggled, her eyes closed once more.
Chloe, Deacon, and Aiden stood at the front door. “Are you sure you’ll be okay by yourself?” Deacon asked. “One of us can stay if you want.”
Bronwyn, from her pillow-packed spot on the couch, held up a small black device. “I can call you if there’s any problem.”
“That’s the TV remote,” Chloe pointed out.
Bronwyn sighed, put down the remote, and picked up her phone. “Okay, now I can call you if there’s any problem.”
“Maybe I should stay with her,” Aiden said.
Bronwyn looked at them. They were silhouetted against the last of the day’s sunlight, each carrying a musical instrument in a well-worn case. Deacon had his fiddle tucked under his arm, Aiden’s guitar case barely cleared the floor as it waved in his hand, and Chloe held her autoharp close to her chest. Bronwyn felt entirely left out. “Will you—all of you—get on out of here? I don’t want any pity company. Tell everyone at the barn dance I’ll see ’em soon, okay?”
“Come on, everybody into the truck,” Deacon said. He was the last one out the door, and glanced back at his daughter. “Normally I’d tell you not to have a wild party while we were gone.”
She smiled. “Normally I’d say I wouldn’t, then I would.”
The screen door slammed. Bronwyn sat on the couch and stared at the dark TV screen until she heard the truck’s engine fade into the distance. The silence unique to the mountains settled in around her, broken only when the refrigerator’s compressor kicked on.
She turned on the TV and began flipping channels, careful to avoid any news. She stopped when she got to some horrid science fiction movie about a half man, half mosquito. For ten minutes she laughed at the inanity. Then, as darkness settled in outside, she fell asleep.
In her dreams she saw, as if flying above it, the supply convoy rumbling down the highway to Basra. The sun blazed through the dust and sand. She banked to the left, changing direction as easily as a bird, and watched the scurrying insurgents, black against the bright sand, take position for their ambush. Their gun barrels waved like insects’ antennae.
She was not alone. She felt the presence of her haint Sally Olds beside her on the wind. Bronwyn did not turn to look.
Then she snapped awake as a car horn blared the first bars of “Dixie” from right outside the door.
She started to jump up, then remembered her leg. She wrapped the plastic cast around it and fastened the Velcro straps. She got to her feet just as someone pounded heavily on the door. A tall figure stood outlined in the glare from headlights. She flicked on the porch light, knowing who it would reveal.
Dwayne Gitterman stood there, his hands insolently on the top of the doorframe. The pose displayed his muscular body to great effect, and his smile beneath his cowboy hat was the same knowing leer it always was. His eyes were red from dope and drink, but everything else was as attractive as she remembered it. Behind him his truck was parked in the front yard, its headlights cutting through the night. Insects danced in the horizontal shafts.
“Hey, baby,” he said. “Home alone?”
“I ain’t your baby,” she said through the screen. “Go away, Dwayne.”
“Aw, you don’t mean that.” He picked up a twelve-pack box of Budweiser and waved it back and forth. “You ain’t gonna send me out to drink this all alone, are you?”
Bronwyn was caught between two equally unexpected reactions. One was purely physicaclass="underline" Dwayne would always be someone whose mere presence got her blood racing and juices flowing. She remembered one night when he’d bent her roughly over the dropped tailgate of that very same truck, hiked up her denim skirt and gone at her with a ferocity that put bruises across the tops of her thighs. She’d never thought she could feel that kind of desire again, and having it strike so unexpectedly disoriented her a bit.
The other response was pure loathing. This was Dwayne, the boyfriend who’d spent six solid months trying to get her into a threesome, who’d abandoned her topless on a gravel road after an argument, who’d forgotten to take the condom off after drunkenly coupling with another girl just before he picked her up, and who generally treated her like a convenient piece of meat most of their time together. Now he showed up unannounced, no doubt after hiding and watching everyone else leave for the dance, certain that his lazy smile and country-boy charm would have Bronwyn’s panties on the floor in no time.
“Dwayne, so help me I’ll get the shotgun and blow new holes in you if you don’t get out of here,” she warned.
“You couldn’t hurt me, Bronwyn,” he said smoothly. “There’s too much history between us.”
“Yeah, just like between Iran and Iraq.”
He held up a plastic bag. “I’ve got something to take the edge off that pissy mood.”
She sighed. “Dwayne, please. I had surgery yesterday, I’m really not in the mood. Call me later this week and we’ll see.”
“We’ll see? That’s not a no.”
“Boy, nothing gets past you, does it?”
“Nothing as hot as the Bronwynator, baby.”
Something flared deep in her chest at the use of that nickname, and she slapped the wall beside the door so hard, the impact rippled in her aching leg bones. She could almost feel his throat crushing between her hands, and was grateful for the screen separating them. She hissed, “Get the fuck out of here, Dwayne. Now! Don’t say another goddamn word.”
“Okay, I’m going, jeez.” He stumbled down the porch steps to his truck. “Goddamn, must be on the rag or something,” he muttered as he fumbled into the cab. The engine roared to life, and she felt the thump of the truck’s bass playing some hip-hop tune. Things rattled on shelves throughout the house. He turned sharply, cut deep ruts in the yard, and roared off down the driveway.
She stayed looking into the darkness for a long moment, letting her emotions sort themselves out. At some point she realized tears had run down her face, but she hadn’t noticed until she tasted the salt on her lips. She switched off the porch light, turned, and nearly screamed.
Sally the haint stood between her and the TV. In the bright light, the gaping wound in her side was even clearer. The broken ends of the ribs showed white through the red meat of her flesh, and the tattered dregs of multicolored organs dangled in space.
“Y’all did the right thing,” she said. Then she vanished.
Bronwyn stared at the space Sally had just occupied; she was close to hyperventilating. She managed to hop to the couch, where she pressed herself back into a corner, a pillow clutched to her chest. She stared at the TV, where a tall actress hawked cell phones.
A line popped into her head:
She sat up straight. That wasn’t a song she remembered; that was something new. She found a pencil and scrawled the lyric along the edge of the TV Guide cover.
She was asleep when Deacon, Chloe, and a very tired Aiden returned home at 2 A.M. Aiden mumbled, “G’night,” and slumped off to bed. Chloe draped a blanket over Bronwyn and tucked it in around her shoulders.
“Want me to carry her to her room?” Deacon asked softly.
Chloe shook her head. “Let her sleep here. I need to wash her sheets tomorrow anyway.”
He nodded. “I’m going to check the weather for in the morning. I’ll be along in a bit.”
Chloe kissed Deacon and went off to the bedroom. He settled on the other end of the couch and muted the TV, putting on the closed-captioning so he wouldn’t wake Bronwyn. He watched the Weather Channel until he, too, nodded off.