“Spot inspection, probably,” Joe said. “You didn't have any contraband, did you?” After the mess of the trailer in Greeley, Joe was grateful to have his own room, understood that he had traded privacy for convenience here in the camp. He accepted it as a condition of employment.

“They got no right to go through my room. It's in like . . . the Constitution or some shit.”

Joe shrugged. “It's in your contract. Besides, it's not like your parents never searched your room, lurked on your Facebook, read your texts. You're too young for privacy.”

Dustin's jaw dropped. Joe could almost see him searching his memories for examples of this exact kind of injustice. “That's fucked up, man. I mean, I thought I lost a dime bag once, but maybe my dad just took it and didn't have the balls to say anything, you know?” The kid, betrayed, looked even younger than normal.

Joe felt like such an ass, sowing the seeds of discontent between this kid and what was probably his perfectly well-meaning, loving father. It was exactly this contrariness, this need to point out flaws to others, that had driven Mandy crazy. “Like your mother,” she had said. “Just like her. Knock it off, will you?” And he had tried, he had, was still trying, really, but he never saw it until after the fact, when the razor-sharp effect of his bullshit had hit the people around him. When the wound was already inflicted, and he had no idea how to stop the bleeding.

“Stone wants to make me a land man back in Greeley.” Joe needed to talk to someone, and Dustin, unbelievably, had become the only person in the world who'd listen.

“That's where your wife is, right? And it's money?” Dustin shrugged. “I guess I don't know why it's even a question.”

“She might not want me,” Joe said. He felt the truth of it press his shoulders toward the prairie ground, as though the man camp would absorb him easily, hide everything that terrified him, hide the ways he himself was terrifying. “She might be better off.”

Dustin was back to tapping on his phone screen, no eye contact. “Sounds like you don't know for sure what she wants.”

Joe used the toe of his boot to trace a line in the dust in front of his chair. He closed his eyes, leaned back against the trailer wall, and was surprised to find not a memory but a possible future. Mandy and Dustin and Joe together at JB's Drive In, the three of them laughing over milkshakes. Joe saying to Dustin, You're lucky she likes you, and Dustin throwing up both hands, Of course she likes me, I'm charming as hell, and Mandy laughing, taking Joe's hand. Nobody resurrected, everybody still alive, broken, together.

“If I had it to do over again,” Joe said, “I'd do it different.”