Chapter 44

• Beau didn’t say a word when he stepped into the bank that afternoon — didn’t say much when the teller asked if he was sure, if he really wanted to drain every dusty dollar from that old farm account he’d been feedin’ with odd jobs and side work since he was twenty. He just signed the slip, scratched his name sloppy on the line, stuffed the envelope in the glove box of that beat-up pickup like it was burnin’ a hole through his chest.
• The land was up off the old county road — fifteen acres, give or take. A patch of rolling pasture that sloped up into a quiet hill, soft grass blowin’ like an ocean when the wind cut right. Sadie always said it looked like heaven — no fences, no signs, just the hush of wildflowers and the bones of an old fence line half-swallowed by sumac.
• There was a house up there too — squat, square, roof half-caved on the back side, porch swing long rotted through. But Beau saw what she’d see — open beams, a kitchen window big enough to watch the sunrise, a porch wide enough for bare feet and good coffee, the hum of her laugh floatin’ out to the pasture while she pressed her nose to the glass pie safe he’d build with his own rough hands.