“You done passed the ranch house, darlin’,” one of them yelled.

“I’m looking for Lyle Jones,” she said, raising her voice.

“He ain’t comin’ in today, honey. He left at noon yesterday. He’s got a big weekend planned. He’ll be back on Monday if you want to come back,” the guy said.

“What kind of weekend?” she asked.

“A huge one. If you’re his sister, you were supposed to meet him at the courthouse yesterday. Guess you’re too late.”

“I’m not his sister,” Jody said.

One guy chuckled. “Then, honey, you’re too late for anything.”

“What’s that mean?” she asked.

“Ask Lyle,” another one laughed.

“Thank you.” Jody rolled the window up and turned the truck around. Sister, huh?

His older sister lived in Houston and never had liked Jody. She seldom came around and when she did, she stayed in a hotel. She was trouble on wheels, and pretty often, after Lyle spent time with her, he was hard to live with. However, he did always tell Jody when Brenda was coming to visit. Why would he withhold that information now?

She was still fuming when she got back to the trailer. Thank goodness it was Saturday and the shop was closed or she’d be late getting to work. She tried calling him again but didn’t get an answer, so she went inside and brewed a pot of coffee. She poured a cup and carried it to the sofa. She’d only taken one sip when her phone rang. She grabbed it so fast that she fumbled the cup and spilled it on the carpet. She forgot all about the stain it would leave when she saw Lyle’s number come up on the caller ID.

“Where in the hell are you? Did you and Brenda hit the bars last night? If you’re in jail, I’ll be damned if I come bail y’all out. You can just rot in there, and why did you take off work yesterday? What’s so big that you can’t even tell me why you aren’t coming home?” She stopped long enough for a breath. “Did you go and sell our place to Quincy? Is that why you didn’t come home?”

“Jody, slow down,” he said. “We need to talk.”

“What do you think we’ve been doing?” She finally got control of her shaking hands. Even if he sold the property, he was alive and not lying in the morgue. They could deal with anything if he was alive, right? “I’ve been out looking for you and was about to start calling hospitals. Why didn’t you come home last night?”

“Because I got married,” he blurted out.

“You did what?” Jody shook her head. Surely she’d either heard him wrong, or else he was trying to make her laugh so she wouldn’t be angry.

“We haven’t been doin’ so good the past six months. You know that, Jody. I want kids. You don’t know what the hell you want. I kind of had an affair,” he said.

“You did what? How do you kind of have an affair? Either you cheated on me or you didn’t. Which one is it?” Her voice shot up an octave with every word.

“The ranch foreman’s daughter and I—”

“You mean that teenager, the one I met at the Christmas party? Katy, or was it Kristin?”

“Her name is Kennedy,” Lyle answered. “She’s almost twenty, Jody.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you? This is not a joke?” Her hands trembled and her stomach twisted into a tight little knot.

“Yes, Jody, I’m serious. We’re on a weekend honeymoon right now,” he said. “She told me a couple of days ago that she’s pregnant, so I’m doing the right thing. We’re moving the trailer to the ranch. It’d be real good if you could get your things out by tomorrow evening. The movers are coming Monday evening to take it away. You can have the travel trailer. I can’t pull it with my motorcycle anyway.”

Her whole world was crumbling beneath her feet. She was going to drop into a deep sinkhole any minute, but he sounded like he was discussing whether they should put in ten or twenty tomato plants that year. “I didn’t mean for this to happen, but it happened, and I’m not letting my child grow up without a father like I did.”

Her coffee cup crashed to the floor from her hands and broke into dozens of pieces. She opened her mouth to give him a stinging tirade of cuss words, but nothing would come out. She was every bit as frozen as she’d been in the dream.

“Are you there?” he finally asked.

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Jody. In some ways I’ll always love you, but . . .” He paused.

She could imagine him raising a shoulder in a shrug. A picture flashed in her mind from the Christmas party the year before. Kennedy, the daughter of the foreman on the ranch, had worn a tight red dress that barely covered her underpants. She was curvy, like Jody had been back when she and Lyle first started dating.

Jody hadn’t had a honeymoon, but then Lyle had declared that a marriage license was just a piece of worthless paper that the government used to make money. When she moved in with him, he was living in a one-room garage apartment. They’d lived there for four years while they saved enough money to buy a used trailer house and a couple of acres of ground from his aunt.

“How long has this been going on?” Jody’s knees buckled and she fell backward onto the sofa. This couldn’t be true. She would have known if he was having an affair. She was his wife, even if it wasn’t on paper.