His mother rolled her eyes. “We’ve been Methodists ever since the Baptists took an opinion on my moving Darren into the house without rings on our fingers. I swear to Jesus, Joel, some of those ladies act like God made pussy just to keep yeast in circulation.”

Darren tooted the horn again. She wrapped Joel in a quick hug, kissed his cheek. He felt an anxious heartbeat in her hand. Saw, in the brisk way she twisted on her tall heel, a stubborn effort to fool the world into behaving itself.

“Dylan’s fine,” she said. “And if he ain’t fine, you call me—I got my phone on ring.”

Joel paced the empty house. He studied his brother’s Instagram, spotted faces from the game on Friday, noted the ways the boys either posed in their football pads spreading their fingers into W’s like gang signs (it took him far too long to realize that the W’s stood for “win”) or else leaned against truck beds and lockers with their hands cupped over their crotches, their eyes, broody and vacant, fixed to the camera. So serious, so young. What were the odds, Joel wondered, that Dylan and his friends pulled on this showy angst to conceal a truer turmoil inside?

Joel bounced around Instagram profiles. He settled on Bethany Tanner’s, his brother’s girlfriend, but learned little in studying it. Bethany was the sort of petite, strong-boned blonde darling Joel used to be told he should desire. He detected the glow of money in her impeccable skin and finally realized why her name was so familiar: the Tanner family owned a cattle ranch west of town. If the ranch was still running—which, judging from Bethany’s gleaming Lexus, it was—those cows must be one of the few moneymaking ventures left in Pettis County.

Here Bethany stood with Dylan at the game Friday night, one leg cocked up behind her. Here she was beaming with the other cheerleaders in the high school’s gym. Here she was with Dylan again, the two of them smiling in camouflage, posed in front of a deer stand with hunting rifles in their hands. Sharpest Shot In the West he calls me lol, read the caption. #girlslikegunstoo.

In her most recent picture, posted yesterday, Bethany lay resting against a pile of pillows, a sticker of a cartoon thermometer jutting from her pouting mouth. why does this never happen on school days haha #fever.

Joel wondered what the odds were that Dylan might be resting on a pillow beside her, cropped just out of the frame.

Joel made a lap around the kitchen. Another. He canceled his flight back to New York and emailed his team to tell them he would be in Texas for a few days longer.

He pushed open the door to his brother’s room.

Things inside were remarkably tidy for a boy Dylan’s age. Joel went to the closet, found a shirt on every hanger. He checked the drawers of the dresser and found them full of socks and underwear. His brother was traveling light.