Million Dollar Road by Amy Connor

himself. The dead minivan, Wolf’s Xbox, the aboveground pool nobody used anymore. Bud had done his best.
    Lireinne unexpectedly knew an intense wave of affection for this man, this plodding, responsible man who’d always stood by her and her half brother, no matter what.
    â€œWell, a course you’re pretty,” Bud said now, turning to look at her with a smile. “Always have been to me, anyway. Real pretty since you slimmed down so much.” His honest face turned quizzical, horizontal lines creasing his sunburned forehead. He dug his bag of chewing tobacco out of his hip pocket. “Why you askin’?”
    Lireinne shrugged, feeling embarrassed. “No reason. You coming in?” Shouldering her purse, she opened the truck’s door and climbed down onto the gravel lot.
    â€œI’ll wait. You need money, baby girl?” Bud stuck a pinch of Red Man under his lip and reached for his spit cup.
    â€œNo, I got the rest of my pay. I won’t be long.” In the scorching sunlight, she paused by the truck’s open door.
    â€œLove you.” Even as the words left her mouth, Lireinne was surprised at herself for saying them.
    â€œHuh?” Bud said absently. “What’d you say?”
    â€œNothing.” She shut the truck’s door and turned away. Lireinne didn’t know why she’d said that in the first place.
    Love was a rare word in the Hooten household. Bud and Wolf became almost visibly uncomfortable whenever it came up. To Lireinne, saying I love you felt like one of those half-remembered French phrases— la plume de ma tante est sur la table dans le jardin —unfamiliar, wondering if she’d gotten it right. It seemed almost stupid to say it, as though she could have just ordered a well-done tractor or something equally ignorant from a snooty waiter.
    Like she’d ever been to that kind of restaurant anyway, or ever would.
    No, love must be what you did, like the kind of good stuff Bud was always doing, not something you said. Anybody could say, “I love you,” Lireinne reflected as she walked up the wooden steps of Montz’s Feed Store. For all she knew, even her loser mother might have said it to Bud once upon a time.
    And yet, having uttered the word love, Lireinne found herself wanting to say it again, wanting to feel the taste of it on her tongue once more. It was a painful, sweet wanting that was all the more compelling for that word, love, being a relative stranger to her.
    Before she pulled the screened door open to go inside the store, Lireinne shaded her eyes, looking down at Bud, patiently waiting for her in the stifling truck.
    She waved to him. Bud waved back.
    Je t’aime .

C HAPTER 7
    I t was late in the day. When Emma’s truck had pulled up to the feed store, the only other vehicle parked in the lot was a rusted red pickup. A big man was slumped on its front seat, dozing in the heat.
    â€œHell of a scorcher, Emma.” Sarah Fortune and Emma had gone inside and were waiting at the counter made of rough planks while Ricky Montz, the owner, was busy with another customer.
    â€œThanks for the ride into town,” Sarah added.
    â€œNo problem at all. You’re on my way. What’s the story with your car?” Emma asked.
    â€œIt’s a piece-of-shit Mercedes, that’s the story.” As always, Sarah’s conversation was larded with profanity. “Goddamned parts take years to come in, even when it’s a new car. My piece of shit’s an antique.”
    At first, eighty-year-old Sarah’s casual, salty language had shocked Emma when the epithets dropped from those wrinkled old-lady lips in a shower of flaming horse-apples. Over the past year, though, she’d become accustomed to it and now this eccentricity barely registered.
    â€œDamnation, isn’t it ever going to rain?” Sarah complained. She took off her green John Deere cap and fanned her face, setting her wiry