“I will.”
“You’ll apologize to Ben. He’s the one you’ve hurt most. He’s seventeen, and he watched his uncle steal from his mother the week his father died.”
Dwayne closed his eyes.
“I will,” he whispered.
“Good.” I picked up my coat. “Then we’ll see what comes after that.”
He came the next Saturday at six in the morning, in a pair of stiff new coveralls, with a thermos and a shamefaced expression. Ben was in the barn. I watched from the kitchen window as the two of them stood facing each other in the cold gray light, my son tall and rigid, my brother-in-law stooped and hat in hand.
I couldn’t hear what Dwayne said. It took him a long time. Ben stood motionless through all of it, his arms crossed, his jaw set. When it was over, there was a pause that went on and on. A cow bawled in the lot. The wind lifted the corner of the tarp on the machine shed.
