Chapter 21: My Brother at the Grave

Nathaniel's POV

The side gate was open an inch, the way it had been the night I told her stone I'd married.

I texted Imogen from the car: Cemetery. Colby called me. Rule four.

She answered before I could put the phone away.

Take Bridget's friend, the detective, she wrote. He's parked two blocks from the gate. Don't go in alone.

I looked up the road.

There was an unmarked car with its lights off, and a man in it lifted two fingers from the wheel.

I walked in anyway.

Colby sat on the gravel in front of her stone, with his back against the next one over and a bottle between his knees.

He had been there for hours.

His good coat was black with damp, and he'd stopped trying to look like anything.

"You came," he said.

"You asked."

"I didn't think you would."

"Neither did I."

He lifted the bottle toward the stone.

"I talk to her sometimes," he said. "You didn't know that. I come on her birthday. I bring the yellow flowers."

I had always wondered who left the yellow flowers.

I'd thought it was her mother.

"Don't," I said.

"I'm trying to tell you."

"Then tell me. Don't tell her."

He nodded, and the bottle shook in his hand.

"We left Dad's table at eleven. I'd had a bottle of wine and half of Dad's scotch. I knew I shouldn't be on the road."

"But you took the keys."

"Dad put them in my hand. I wanted him to say I was good at something."

The wind turned over a handful of dead leaves.

"She said, Colby, are you sure? From the front seat. And I said, relax, I've done it a hundred times."

I closed my hands in my pockets.

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