“Twirled a rope, did a few horse tricks.” Coot cleared his throat and made his voice a few notes lower. “Sharpshooting.”

“Really? You’re not just putting me on?”

“Oh no. Would I lie to you?”

Judy sighed, and Coot saw the steam exit her mouth and rise upward. She seemed amused by what he’d told her. They sat in silence, watching the icy sky go from dark blue to purple.

“What happened with the girl?” Judy finally said.

“Who?”

“Evelyn. What happened?”

“Oh, her?” Coot said. “She didn’t think I was good enough for her. She came from money, and I was just a lowly calf-roping stranger. We were from two different worlds.”

Lowly calf-roping stranger. That was a nice touch, he thought.

She was beginning to cry again. Her profile was so lovely she looked like a sculpture in the early daylight. “I know how you musta felt.”

Coot kept shoveling. “Yeah, she ended up getting married to a banker out in Greensburg. Broke my heart’s what she did. Broke my heart in two.”

Judy wiped her face with her hands. Coot felt bad about lying to her, but then, he would’ve jumped off a shallow bridge headfirst just to get a small shred of her attention.

The weather started to change. Tiny bits of ice began falling from the sky and covering the world. Slivers of it fell in Judy’s hair and on her eyelashes.

“He makes me feel like I’m worthless,” she said. “Will makes me feel like I’m a—”

But her words were cut off. Judy turned her head away from Coot. She covered her mouth with her hand. She leaned forward and retched, losing the contents of her stomach all over the grass.

And all at once, Coot knew why she had been crying.

She pressed her hand on her stomach. “I love him. I love Will, and he doesn’t want me.” She rubbed her belly with both hands and closed her eyes. “And now he’s messed up my whole life, Coot. My whole life.”

Coot touched her blonde hair. It was soft. She pressed her face into his shoulder and cried. She ruined his shirt with cold tears and saliva, and he was glad to sacrifice the shirt to her cause.

“He’ll never love me back,” she said in a voice that was muffled. “He’ll never love me back.”

Coot knew exactly how she felt.

Forty
Cold, Cold Hearts

It was dark. The service station off the dirt highway was empty. The windows were covered in sleet. The ice was coming from the sky in large sheets. Pete was worried about his mother. She slept so hard that she wasn’t moving.

“I love you, Mama,” said Pete. He’d been saying this to her as often as he could so that she wouldn’t forget it. “I love you, Mama,” he said again. But she made no indication she’d heard.