Chapter 4

Doyle Hensley stood up from the chair against the wall.

He was slow about it, the way old men are when their knees have suspicions about the future. He put his ball cap on his head, then took it off again, turning it in his hands like he was reading something written on the inside.

"I got something to say," he said. "And I want to say it before I can't."

Rosalind looked at him. She had known Doyle for four years. He had been there every time she showed the barn to a client, every time she rearranged the chairs, every time she locked up after a late event. She had never once seen him look the way he looked now — not surly, not bored, but like a man carrying a stone in his chest that had finally gotten too heavy to hold.

"Go ahead," Hollis said.

Doyle nodded. He took another breath before he started, and when he spoke his voice was low and rough, like it was coming up from the bottom of a well.