Chapter 22: The Truck on the East Road

Rafe's POV

At seven on the morning of the fourteenth, Frank Brennan's truck was on the east road again.

I saw it from the dock with my coffee in my hand.

It sat in the same pull-off, under the same sycamore, with the engine running.

Jo was upstairs still asleep, with her hand open on my side of the bed.

I set the mug on a piling.

I walked the quarter mile up the gravel in my work boots, and the dew soaked my cuffs.

He watched me come the whole way and didn't move.

I stopped at his window.

He rolled it down.

His eyes were red, and there was a thermos on the dash.

"You came to watch," I said.

"I came to see how it looks from here."

He looked past me at the hall roof, the dock and the lake.

"It looked different the last time."

"It looked like a text on a phone."

"It looked like a boy standing very still."

I didn't say anything.

I hadn't known he'd seen that.

"You stood there two hours," Frank said.

"I couldn't tell if you'd jump in the water or come up the road after me."

"I had a tire iron on the seat."

"You'd have used it."

"I don't know," he said. "That's the truth."

It was the first true thing he had ever said to me.

I put my hand on the sill of his window.

"There's a chair for you at five-thirty," I said. "Third row, on the aisle."

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