Chapter 16: The Long Way

It was dark by the time the car took me up the drive of the Fitzhugh house.

Snow lay a hand deep on the lawn, and the half mile of road from the gate was trodden down the middle in one line of uneven footprints.

One foot had been planted firm, and the other had dragged.

At the second bend there was a place where someone had sat down and stood up again.

At the fourth, there were two.

I told the driver to stop at the front steps and got out without my coat buttoned.

Lorne stood on the top step in the porch light, with no cane.

He was wet to the knee, and snow had frozen on his beard.

He held my gray coat over his arm, the old one with the brown scorch on the left cuff.

I stopped on the bottom step.

He did not say my name, and he did not say sorry.

He came down one step with his jaw tight and his bad leg shaking, and held out the coat.

I took it.

The cuff was dry and stiff in my hand, and the scorch was exactly where I had burned it in March.

"That's the coat I was wearing the night I washed your floor," I said. "Not the one in the video."

"I know."

"You carried it all the way up that hill."

"I had it with me in the car," he said, hoarse. "The rest was the walk."

I looked past him at the line of footprints going down the lawn.

"You can't have walked that on your own."

"I did."

"On a leg that is still mending," I said, and my voice rose. "You could have fallen, and there was no one on that road."

"Yes," he said. "That was the point."

The front door opened behind him.

Harlan stood in the hall in his shirtsleeves, with his cane in one hand and the other tucked behind his back.

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