Chapter 20: Six to Two

Nobody in my lab spoke while the video ran.

On the little cracked screen, Gerald Lathrop stood at the head of his dining table in the warm light, with the keys hanging from his finger.

"Colby, you drive," he said. "Your brother's had enough."

"Dad, I've had a bottle," Colby's voice said, from somewhere off the screen.

"You hold it better than he does. Take them home. Don't argue with me in front of the girl."

He dropped the keys into Colby's palm.

The camera swung back, and a woman's face filled the screen, laughing, with her hand over her mouth.

"Your father is terrifying," she whispered to the lens. "I love him."

Then the screen went dark.

Nathaniel had not moved from the doorway.

I watched him take it in, and he made no sound at all.

Colby made a small sound.

He pushed back his chair, and it scraped on the tile.

"Nate," he said. "Nate, I was going to tell you. I swear to God, I was going to."

"When?"

"I don't know."

"Four years." Nathaniel's voice was very quiet. "You sat next to me at her funeral."

Colby opened his mouth.

Nothing came out, and he broke.

He shoved past me and out through the side door, and his footsteps hammered down the stairwell.

I started after him.

"Let him go," Nathaniel said.

"He'll run."

"Where?" His hand closed on the old phone. "He's got nothing left to run to."

He lifted it from the bench.

He didn't look at the screen again.

At five o'clock the boardroom was full.

Gerald sat at the head, and for the first time I saw that his chair was too big for him.

The doctor's face filled a screen on the wall, gray in the glare of a kitchen light in Maine.

Beside it, the medic from Bridget's list sat in a borrowed suit, with his run sheet on his knee.

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