"No ma'am."
"You going to be able to live with that?"
Wade thought about it. "I think," he said, "that's about the easiest thing anybody's asked me all week."
* * *
His mother was waiting up for him that night. She was sitting on the couch in the living room with the lamp on and a glass of wine she hadn't touched, and when he came in she patted the cushion beside her the way she had when he was small and something had gone wrong at school.
"Patsy called," she said. "She says you were kind to him."
"I tried to be."
"She says you were hard on him too."
"I tried to be that too."
His mother nodded slowly. She looked at the wall of photographs, at Earl and Delia in front of the trawler, and she took a breath that seemed to go all the way down.
"You saw the lid," she said. "In his shed."
Wade turned to look at her. "How do you know about the lid?"
"Because your daddy told me. Once. One time in thirty-four years, and he made me swear on the Bible I'd never tell another living soul, and I never did, and I've been sitting here two days trying to decide if keeping that promise is still the right thing or if it's just the easy thing." She turned the wine glass slowly by the stem. "I think it's the easy thing. I think it's been the easy thing for a long time."