“You all know better than to come down here alone,” Daddy said, but his words were gentle. “It would near about kill your daddy if one of his babies was to get hurt.” He’d lifted us up into his arms and walked upstream to the cow guard and then to the truck where Momma waited.

I LAY ON THE BED A FEW MORE MINUTES BEFORE I GOT UP AND showered. I let hot water beat against my neck and back till the bathroom became a sauna. I felt the sweat bead all over my body like another layer of skin. I didn’t want to leave that shower, but after twenty minutes the water began to cool. I got dressed and went to Allen’s room.

The door was unlocked. Allen lay on his bed, the only light coming through the gap in the curtains. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness I saw a lampshade on the floor, jagged pieces of the lamp itself scattered close by.

I looked outside and saw the late-afternoon sky was cloudless. If they could have just waited a day, maybe just a few hours, I thought.

I closed the curtain and lay down beside Allen.

“Some of those children in the café,” Allen said. “They were his children, weren’t they?”

“Yes. A girl and a boy.”

Allen pressed the back of his hand to his forehead, as if shielding his face from a blow.

“How old are they?” he asked, his voice slightly muffled by his forearm.

“Sheila’s four. Gary is seven.”

“If I could have even imagined it could turn out this way. . . .”

“You couldn’t,” I said. “But I’m not so sure I can say that for myself. Joel knew it could happen, and Randy and Ronny knew too. What they knew I should have known, did know.”

“You warned them,” Allen said.

“I warned them too late.”

Allen put his arm under my neck and turned me toward him. “He was a good father to those children, wasn’t he?”

“From everything I know, yes, he was.”

“A better father than I was,” Allen said. He pulled me closer.

We pressed ourselves against each other, into each other. For a moment I thought of undressing, of putting my hand on the back of Allen’s head and leading his mouth to my flesh.

But I also thought of what it would feel like afterward—the smell of sex on our bodies, tangled sheets, late-afternoon light slanting through the window.

Perhaps we might transcend everything that had happened that day, and there might be enough lingering afterward to hearten us through the rest of the day and night. But there was also the possibility that the temporary distraction would be just that—temporary—and so much the sadder for its transience. Then the room would only feel emptier, the space between Allen and me, between ourselves and our own hearts, wider.