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The crickets were chirping in the summer darkness as Boyd gingerly climbed the familiar wooden stairs. He stepped across the porch and tapped lightly on the wooden slat of the screen door with the backs of two knuckles. "Ava?" He waited, uncertain whether to knock once more, then called her name again.

Finally her voice came from inside. "Who's that?"

He hesitated before naming himself, sure that a Crowder was the last thing she'd want to see right now. But he had come, and he needed to speak his piece, and he would brave the shotgun he was certain was in her hands if that was what was necessary. "It's Boyd."

The response came quickly. "You get the hell away from here!"

"I apologize for the late hour, I … I just want a word."

From inside came the sound he had expected, the ratchet of a slug into the chamber of the shotgun, and even as her footsteps came toward the door Boyd retreated across the porch. By the time the lights came on inside and Ava threw the front door open, he was down the steps, facing her, with his hands in the air.

She opened the screen, stepping out and lifting the shotgun, pointing it directly at his chest. It was no idle threat; they both knew that. She knew how to use it—she had used it on his brother, to great effect, and under significant provocation. And Boyd had pursued her, yes, he had. No doubt he richly deserved her ire as well. "What the hell you want?" she demanded.

"I'm alone, and my hands are empty as you can see."

Ava brandished the weapon at him. "Yeah, well maybe you can use 'em to keep this shot from rippin' open your chest."

"Well, I can only imagine that you'd want to do that, Ava, given our history."

"Boyd, I gotta warn you. If I start countin' down from ten, I may lose patience at five."

Clearly, if he was going to get across the point of this nocturnal visit, he was going to have to get right down to it, with no preamble. As simply, as sincerely as he could, he said, "I just came to say I'm sorry."

She took a step backward, shaking her head, like she didn't understand what he had said. Most likely, she didn't believe. He couldn't blame her. For so much of his life, he had been a man who could not be believed.

Boyd stepped backward. "I will leave now, and disturb you no further." He stepped backward, letting his hands fall, turning away and walking off into the darkness.

He stopped when he heard her call out after him, "Sorry about what?"

Trying to remember the words as he had practiced them, Boyd walked back into the circle of light from the front porch. "So many things that I have done to you."

"Well, I want to hear this."

That was encouraging. He hadn't expected her to be so receptive. "Well, it's hard to know where to begin," he said carefully. "I suppose I could start with the last time I saw you. I held you hostage in your own home, and I instigated a shoot-out in your dinin' room."

The shotgun didn't waver in her hands, and her eyes blazed with anger. "That didn't end so bad, far as I was concerned."

In truth, it hadn't ended badly for Boyd, either. It had led directly to his learning to find God, to his learning to become a better man. Through the aegis of Raylan Givens, which was entirely too humorous to be contemplated in a serious moment such as this one. Boyd thought back to the next mile marker in his crimes against Ava. "Well, before that, for years I lusted after you, and I was far from subtle. And that was wrong. Not only because you were my brother's wife, but because it … it was unseemly, unwanted, and it made you uncomfortable." Looking at her now, framed against the porch, that shotgun in her hands, Boyd could admit she was a beautiful, wild woman—but he didn't feel that dreadful urge toward her. Not now that he knew it was wrong.

"If by uncomfortable, you mean it made my skin crawl, then yes."

"But by far my biggest regret concerns my brother Bowman."

"What, you wish he was never born?" Ava's lips had pinched together at the mention of the name, and Boyd could see the ghost of his brother's abuse in the tension that had gathered in her body.

"No, no, no," Boyd hastened to clarify, "I don't question the will of God bringin' any soul into this world. My regret is that …" He moved closer to her, wanting her to see how very sorry he really was. "I did nothin' to stop, or in any way curtail his atrocious behavior. I know how he was, Ava."

She stiffened, the barrel of the gun wavering in her hands for the first time.

"Yet I took no action, and for that I am deeply, deeply sorry. Now, if there is anything that I can do to atone for that which I have done, I will gladly do it." He spread his hands apart again, knowing there was a very real possibility that she might shoot him in retribution, and ready to accept that if it was the will of God.

Ava lifted the gun again, leveling it carefully at his chest. "How 'bout what you do for me is you leave here and you never see me again. Let's start there."

It wasn't what he had hoped for. He had hoped she would give him a chance to truly make up for his sins. But if this was what she needed from him, he would accept it. "All right." He turned and walked away, satisfied that he had said what needed to be said. If more was to come of it, if Ava required some penance of him, she knew where to find him. He would leave his brother's widow in peace.

When he was gone, Ava closed the door and leaned back against it, clutching the shotgun to her chest. Let this be the end, she thought. No more of Boyd's eyes on her, hungry and possessive. No more of Bo's anger, the anger that never did her a damn bit of good because it always missed the demon that lived inside his sons. No more of Raylan's easy charm and even easier body, which had never meant what she wanted it to mean. She was on her own now, and that was the way it would stay.