Chapter 12: What She Said

He didn't start it from the beginning.

He moved his thumb along the bar at the bottom of the screen and stopped it near the end.

He set the phone on the crate between us.

"There's the part where I'm holding," he said. "You don't need that. This is after."

He pressed play.

The rotors came up slow and steady, then the click of a switch, and then nothing but wind and the crackle of a fire, very far off.

"Four minutes, Gran." My own voice, from a long way away. "Hear that? Four minutes."

I put my hands over my face.

A smaller sound came next, a thread of breath.

"Hannie."

It was Gran.

I had not heard her voice in twenty-four days.

I hadn't known how much I would give for it.

"I'm here, Gran."

"Is it cold?"

"What?"

"Is it cold out here." She sounded puzzled, and a little cross. "Somebody get this girl a coat. She'll catch her death."

"I've got a coat. You're lying on it."

"Well." A tiny, dry sound that I realized was a laugh. "That's my girl."

I was crying openly now, with my hands pressed hard to my mouth.

Jonah didn't move.

He sat on the hay bale with his hands knotted between his knees and his eyes on the floor.

"Hannie," Gran said again.

Her voice was thinner.

"Don't you wait on that man anymore."

I heard myself on the tape, saying, "I'm not, Gran, stay with me, please stay."

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