Willa swallows down some more calm as she settles onto one side of her shipping pallet steps, the pot between her knees, and listens though her eyes don't hold onto his. She pulls the oven mitts from her hands, using them to block Sweet Melissa's nose from getting too close to the chicken, and the dog backs up, clever and obedient and somehow fitting with her master's choice of topics. A breath of air escapes her, not a laugh but a distant relative that can't be held back. "Juvenile detention on a horse farm, state prison, and a college degree - you are a man of dichotomous accomplishments, Mr. Hawkins, but I believe you." The words are playful as the two of them have always seemed to be, careful not to let her observations veer into mockery, and Willa inclines her head beside her as invitation while she starts to pull the feathers from the bird.
"And now you're a king, who refuses to have subjects," she muses, rather than follow up the story of Rodeo's state-supervised schooling with the answer to his question. It seems belittling somehow, to follow on his heels and say that she'd spent eight years getting her veterinary degree. Decadent too, even though it's something she remains proud of, regardless of how the course of her life has run. She wouldn't lie if he asked again, but it isn't hard to remember that Maggie had always soured into silence whenever Lee boasted to someone about having one daughter with a law degree and a future-daughter in medicine. "Tell me how you met him?" Willa asks, risking a sideways glance. "It's not prison, he was in Eastern Kentucky Correctional."