Chapter 10: Night Shift

I called Kirk from the end of the Koehlers' drive, because I had run out of people to call.

"Where are you?" he said.

I told him.

"Stay there," he said. "I'm twelve minutes away."

He was nine minutes away.

His truck was old and dark green, with a dent in the passenger door and a coffee cup in the holder from the hospital cafeteria.

He leaned over and pushed the door open for me.

"You look like you need pancakes," he said.

"It's three in the afternoon."

"Pancakes don't know that."

I laughed, and then I was crying, and I couldn't stop.

He didn't say anything.

He put the truck in drive and took us to a diner on the edge of town with cracked red booths and a waitress who called everyone hon.

He ordered for both of us.

I told him everything, in order, over a stack of pancakes I didn't touch.

I told him I would ask Preston for the paper, and that I wanted a witness when I did.

I told him about Kendall's face when Mrs. Koehler said the word file.

I told him the thing I had never told anyone, which was that I had been afraid of Kendall for ten years.

He listened with his arms folded on the table and his gray eyes steady on mine.

When I was done, he nodded.

"Okay," he said.

"Okay?"

"You said it to her face. In front of the person who matters to her. That's not nothing."