She smacks me then too. Somewhere, I think Ric Flair just yelled ‘WHOOOOOO!’ without knowing why. “Don’t get cocky with me, Blake. Are you hurt? What happened? What about the other guy?”

When I don’t answer her barrage of questions fast enough, one hand goes to her hip as she growls, “Well?”

I grin. “You look just like Mom when you do that ‘I already know what you did, so you might as well confess’ face.”

Amy growls at the comparison, even though Mom’s a good woman who’s dealt with more than enough shit from raising Amy and me. “Don’t deflect. Spill.”

I give in, knowing it’s useless to resist. “She pulled out and T-boned my passenger side. We got the cars into the parking lot and exchanged information. She was fine, I’m fine.” I make sure to deliver the details as succinctly and dryly as possible, but Amy has known me since the day I was born and knows all my tells. Even the ones I don’t know I have, which must be what gives me away because she digs in for more information.

“She? Fine? Information?” They’re not questions. They’re puzzle pieces she’s putting together as the words pass over her lips, and I can already see the completed picture she’s going to come up with.

I point a thick finger her way, shaking my head. “Don’t go there. It was a traffic accident. I’ll deal with the county to get the car fixed and never see her again.” Why does a thread of disappointment accompany those words? I mean, yeah, Zoey is beautiful, but a few minutes of conversation, especially one where she made me think she had amnesia, are not something to be smiling like an idiot about. But I am. With a few minutes of distance, that shit was funny.

“County?”

“She works for Williamson County,” I explain. “Coroner.”

The cameraman must be on my side, thinking Amy is more pitbull than should be humanly possible, because he interrupts phase two of her interrogation. “Amy, if you care, your clock’s ticking.”

Buddy, you deserve a Medal of Valor or something for that. It takes balls to interrupt my sister, and yours just got put in jeopardy. But I’m grateful because I don’t have the answers to phase one questions, much less phase two.

“This isn’t over,” she warns me. Instead, she shoves me toward a mustard yellow wing chair that is sitting on the edge of the corn field.

I eye it skeptically. “Amy, why is there a chair that belongs in Grandma’s sitting room out here in the middle of a field?”

“Are you doubting my artistic vision?” she challenges.

The answer is no, unequivocally. The truth is . . . absolutely yes.