Chapter 23: Two Debts

Brogan was sitting on an upturned crate in the diner kitchen when I got back, with both hands wrapped in dish towels.

Lo stood at the stove with her back to him, scrambling eggs for no one.

The white-bearded man had driven me to the door and gone to sit with Alec.

"Your hands," I said.

"They're fine."

"Everyone in this place says that."

He looked up.

His eyes were gray with a night of no sleep, and for once he did not hide it from me.

"Where were you?" he said.

"Candace."

Lo's spoon stopped.

"She had a recording," I said. "It's from the night Wade died."

I told them all of it.

I told it standing in the middle of the kitchen with my hands at my sides.

If I sat down, I thought I would not be able to get up.

I told them about the steel door and the keys.

I told them what Wade said about the Pines Road yard, and the guns, and who bought them back.

I told them the sound.

Lo set the spoon down on the stove.

She turned around slowly, with one hand pressed flat to the front of her apron.

"Say that again," she said. "The part after."

"Clint said he fell."

"He fell."

"That's what he told a young man who was standing at the door."

Lo made a small sound, the kind a person makes when a long-expected blow lands.

"I told you," she said to her son. Her voice was low and cracked.

"I told you at that table. I said Wade wouldn't do that to me."

"I know, Ma."

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