suffering than if he had done it alone. He slapped his hand to hers, returning the pride shining in her face. “Let’s get you some directions.”
B utch’s mother stood at the kitchen counter, her back to him as she wrapped left overs. “This should keep you for a few days.”
“Thanks, Mama. I forgot how much I loved your cooking.”
She turned around then. “As long as you don’t forget how much you love your mama.” She held her arms out.
Butch filled them, resting his chin on his mother’s shoulder. “I could never forget that. Thank you for the fried chicken.” He knew she had made his favorite dish instead of the forewarned casserole after his father told her about the divorce. “Jeb appreciated it, too.”
“That brother of yours.” She sighed heavily, pulling back until she could look at Butch’s face. “Marriage is about finding your partner in life. The one who makes high times higher and the low times worth remembering. What do you want in a wife, Butch?”
Butch looked into his mother’s eyes but didn’t have an answer.
Her gaze drifted away then widened in happiness.
Butch’s father had walked into the room. “That program’s on you like. The one with the dogs.”
“Oh. Is it that late already?” His mother pulled Butch down and kissed his cheek. “You take good care of my baby boy. I love him.”
Butch smiled, embarrassed by her attention but treasuring it. “I’m heading back to the old house. G’night.”
Butch’s brain rattled on the ten minute walk along the bumpy dirt road that skirted the fields. He wasn’t happy to be divorcing Fawn. He hadn’t married with the intention of divorce, not this time nor his other two marriages. He wasn’t proud he hadn’t been able to make a marriage work. He had come to terms with the feeling that divorcing Fawn was right. His life had been on hold for the last year, waiting for some sign telling him what to do. While he waited, Fawn partied and shopped and traveled. Without him. Fawn didn’t love him, if she ever had.
The second and maybe more painful realization was it didn’t surprise him. It didn’t really hurt. His pain stemmed from the fact that for all his professional success, he failed spectacularly in the pursuit of love. A private pain that would become public fodder. He wanted to start living again. He finished the circle, coming back to where they had met and married to turn the page on this chapter of his life.
His mother had asked him what he wanted in a wife. Butch hated not having an answer to give her. Then his father came in, and his mother’s eyes lit up. They had been married for thirty-five years, and she still stood a little straighter and smiled a little brighter when the love of her life walked into the room.
That’s what Butch wanted. He wanted to be the light in a woman’s eyes. The light in her eyes. The spring in her step. The reason she laughs. The one she reaches for. The one she holds on to.
With a song on the verge of birth, the thought of going into the old house made him feel claustrophobic. He needed room to breathe. Butch detoured to his granddad’s shop with a tune on his mind. Like a good whiskey, Butch found his songs needed time to ferment, and the best way to do that was not to try too hard. To give his hands something to do while his mind worked, Butch tinkered with the John Deere that stopped working his second day home. It had added insult to injury. He wanted to do something simple. Something he could accomplish. He had taken the tractor out to start working an empty field when something locked up, and the tractor growled like a poked bear. He took a hammer from the workbench, thinking he might not be able to fix it, but he couldn’t break it any worse.
Somewhere nearby, the Lab barked excitedly. Butch felt a twinge of sympathy for whatever animal the dog played with to death. He crouched low to look through the underbody. The green-painted metal framed slim legs wrapped in