Chapter 7: Do It

Tobias's POV

I went over the garden wall of my father's house at eleven that night, the way I had at fifteen.

I had been put out of that house at twenty, with one trunk and a letter from my stepmother.

I had not stood in its garden in eleven years.

The ivy was still thick on the east wall, and the study window on the ground floor still had its crooked latch.

There was a light in it.

I went down on one knee in the cold bed of the roses and looked through the gap in the curtains.

Langston sat in the big leather chair with his collar open and a glass in his hand.

Nan Fenner stood in front of him in a plain grey nightdress, with her arms at her sides.

I could not hear them through the glass, but the window was an inch up at the bottom, and I had practice at listening.

"Sit," Langston said. "No. Stand, if you like. It's easier to do from standing."

"Do what?"

"What you came to do."

He set the glass down.

He opened the second drawer of the desk, and took out the pistol I had last seen in the front of his coat in the church.

He broke it open and showed her the empty chamber.

Then he took six brass cartridges out of a small box and fed them in, one at a time.

He closed it with a click.

He held it out to her by the barrel.

"There," he said. "It is loaded, and I have not tampered with it."

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