DUST SETTLES SO SLOWLY

Heart to heart. Attack.

A shattering backfire pierces the unsettling silence.

The battered green pick-up kicks up a cyclone. Gravel sprays the Madison’s mailbox next door. It's a big vessel—you could pack a whole lifetime of letters there. They are good neighbors and keep to themselves, like everyone with a homestead hugging the shoulder of County Road 9. It is three miles to town, and the swaying corn blurs to oblivion and holds the field's secrets tight. Loose communities of cows dotting the small hills keep it close to the vest.

Jamie is headed for the horizon.

Justine chases him down the road in bare feet, a twister on her heels. Screaming, her words are out of reach as he drops the clutch and stomps the gas. His escape is so sudden he forgets the tailgate is open, and his toolbox jackknifes into the drainage ditch. Three quail spring from the tall grass.

They were making wedding plans just an hour earlier, but she had to have a heart-to-heart. J and J forever—it’s been carved in the concrete walk since they bought the fixer-upper a couple of years ago. They repaired the crumbling walk and added a fresh coat of paint but not much else. As a result, the home looks fresh and tidy from the outside.

“Ok, you start,” Jamie says. “What’s on your mind." He is not especially interested. Instead, he studies the ebony Stratocaster in the corner, with sensual and provocative double-cutaway horns. His hands ache from memory. Jamie put the guitar down for Justine. Too much temptation and late-night overtures for her liking from sweaty girls in denim shorts who wanted to fuck the lead guitarist—of course, he downplayed it to Justine. Even as he routinely scrubbed the sex off his hands in the dank bathroom of a roadhouse bathroom. He was a guitar player, not a saint. Or so he told the boys as they loaded gear into the van at the crack of dawn.

"I'm not sure how to say this," Justine offers, first breathing heavy, then faltering, then altering her tone to lighten the words—as if she's orating to the bees. She keeps bees in the back corner of the yard, slightly shielded, shaded by a lonely beech tree. Daily she reads Shakespeare to them or Poe or Parker. She swears the honey is better for it. Last year she had laryngitis for a week, and the hive went wild, and the honey suffered. She sold all of it at the county fair, one state over, so she could look people in the eye on Main Street. She has a reputation to keep.

“I’m pregnant,” she says. “It’s not yours.” Justine studies the row of photos hanging from the wall behind Jamie. She thinks about Myrtle Beach and nearly drowning in that freakish undertow. Still, she smiles brightly in the picture, holding a mimosa, and a soft sunrise caresses her auburn hair, the light just right. Jamie slept in that morning. The waiter snapped the photo.

"Who's, is it?”

“Does it matter?”

Both are good questions. A stack of wedding invitations teeters between them on the kitchen table. It's been that way for weeks. Breakfast is eaten standing up or alone. Cereal over the sink for him, Wheaties, and nearly turned yogurt for her on the back porch, where she can hear her bees. She thinks about the fence a lot. The barbed wire is sagging and needs attention.

“I fucked Tommy," she says. "That weekend, you were at the Chiefs game. It had been so long since we… I was drunk. It was stupid. I know." She begins to sob and pushes back from the table, scattering the invitations. The saltshaker tumbles on its side, and Jamie takes a pinch of salt and tosses it over his shoulder.

“It’s bad luck otherwise,” he says.” Nevertheless, the pepper shaker is unperturbed, still upright.

“Is that all you have to say? What does it take to wake you up? I just told you I had sex with your best friend. Fuck! Say something.”

Mr. Skittles, their cat, stretches, scratches, and finds a place on the windowsill, having just missed the thinning sun. His mousing days are over, but he still chases heat.

“Do you remember the time we went to see Shania Twain? Where was that? Tulsa, right? Me, you, Tommy, and Heather. It was right after high school, and we drove the whole way. You looked good in those boots and that enormous cowboy hat. Damn it. I was about three months from knee surgery and still limping. Tommy and Heather fought the entire trip. And you complained non-stop about the length of the drive, the food, the seats. Pretty much everything. I still have the guitar pick Shaina’s guitarist threw into the crowd. That was the highlight. A small piece of fucking plastic that I don’t use.”

Jamie stands and snaps off the small radio sitting on the humming refrigerator. Reception is terrible at the house, and it fades to static often. Occasionally he can pick up the Royals or the weather. On a good day, both.

“What does that have to do with anything,” Justine asks.

“Well, that was the last time I was faithful to you. Heather and I started banging after that trip, and it's still going on now, almost four years later. Do you know what they say? If you're not getting any honey at home, go find a queen bee somewhere else."

“Nobody says that, and you are fucking asshole.” Justine is standing. She runs her palms down the front of her floral skirt of blue and white poppies as if to press it smooth. Her sweater slips from her shoulders. Mr. Skittles drops to the floor with a thud and scampers to his favorite corner behind the leather recliner, near the popping and cracking radiator. The boiler in the basement just kicked on. The forecast is sleet and freezing rain.

“Oh, and Tommy was with me at that Chiefs game. Whoever you fucked it wasn’t him.”

“Are you lying?”

“Are you?”

Both are good questions. But roaring dust settles so slowly it’s hard to see clearly.

For Jamie in his rearview mirror.

For Justine in her bare feet.

Both gasping and choking and running.