“Drop my other two thousand at the pool hall tomorrow afternoon. Give it to a man named Rodney. He’ll be the one handing out balls to the customers. No later than two o’clock. Clear?”

“It ain’t two thousand. It’s one.”

Smoke stared back at him, his eyelids drooping.

Luther said, “Two thousand, it is.”

Smoke thumbed down the hammer and handed the gun to Luther. Luther took it and put it in his coat.

“The fuck out of my house now, Luther.”

Luther stood.

As he reached the kitchen doorway, Smoke said, “You realize, your whole life, you’ll never get this lucky again?”

“I do.”

Smoke lit himself a cigarette. “Then sin no more, asshole.”

Luther walked up the steps to the house on Elwood. He noticed that the railings needed repainting and decided that would be his first order of business tomorrow.

Today, though…

There wasn’t a word for it, he thought, as he opened the screen door and found the front door unlocked. No word at all. Ten months since that horrible night he’d left. Ten months riding rails and hiding out and trying to be another person in a strange city up north. Ten months of living without the one thing in his life he’d ever done right.

The house was empty. He stood in the small parlor and looked through the kitchen at the back door. It was open, and he could hear the creak of a clothesline being pulled, decided that’s something else he’d need to tend to, give that wheel a little oil. He walked through the parlor and into the kitchen and could smell baby here, could smell milk, could smell something still forming itself.

He walked out the back steps and she bent to reach into her basket and lift another wet piece of clothing from it, but then she raised her head and stared. She wore a dark blue blouse over a faded yellow house skirt she favored. Desmond sat by her feet, sucking on a spoon and staring at the grass.

She whispered his name. She whispered, “Luther.”

All the old pain entered her eyes, all the grief and hurt at what he’d done to her, all the fear and worry. Could she open her heart again? Could she put her faith in him?

Luther willed her to go the other way, sent a look across the grass freighted with all his love, all his resolve, all his heart.

She smiled.

Good Lord, it was gorgeous.

She held out her hand.

He crossed the grass. He dropped to his knees and took her hand and kissed it. He wrapped his arms around her waist and wept into her shirt. She lowered herself to her knees and kissed him, weeping, too, laughing, too, the two of them a sight, crying and giggling and holding each other and kissing and tasting each other’s tears.

Desmond started to cry. Wail actually, the sound so sharp it was like a nail in Luther’s ear.