I lower the shotgun slowly, hands shaking so violently I’m half-afraid I’ll set it off again into my own foot.
I don’t know what it is.
His brows are still pulled together. The smarmy half-smile has gone from his face, replaced by a suspicious squint. But it’s not a look of outrage. Like, if someone had just tried to unload a shotgun into my piehole, I wouldn’t be nearly that calm.
Which leads me to wonder:
Did he see the barrel? Did he know what I was doing?
He’d dropped his head right as I leveled it and his eyes met mine. In that regard, there’s no way he could have missed it.
But on the other hand, the pheasants came up and the shooting started at that same instant. Everyone everywhere is still firing wild into the trees. In the chaos of it all, did he understand what I intended
