Chapter 9: What Padraig Took

Padraig's POV

I drove to my brother's house at nine that night with my mother's voice still in my ear.

Is it yours.

I had said no, and she had stayed on the line a moment longer.

I had understood that she wanted to believe me and was not sure she could.

I had never given my family a reason to doubt me.

I had also never given them a reason to ask.

Travis's garage light was on.

The door was up a foot, the way he leaves it in summer, and I ducked under it.

He was sitting on an upturned bucket by his workbench with a beer in his hand and a second one open beside him.

Shelby was not there.

Her car was in the driveway, so she was inside, in Althea's kitchen.

"Come to confess?" Travis said.

"I came to ask why you put my name on a court filing."

"Because it's good."

"Because it's good?"

"It's good, Padraig. You're the quiet one. Nobody's going to believe you'd fight it."

He took a drink.

"A guy like you, living alone over a shop. People think you're lonely. People believe it."

I stood where I was and kept my hands at my sides.

"I drove you to that lab in March," I said.

His shoulders went tight.

"You told me you had a physical."

"Yeah, well."

"You sat in my truck afterward for an hour. You said nobody could ever find out. I thought you were sick."

"I'm not sick."

"Then what are you?"

He laughed, and it was wrong, and he put the beer down on the concrete.

"I'm a guy with a count of nothing," he said. "Almost nothing."

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