Chapter 14: The Back Seat

Erik didn't ask me if I was sure.

He didn't say it was a dream, or the cold, or seven years of wanting it to be true.

He looked at the birch.

He looked at me.

"Tell me what you saw."

"Everything I told you at the tree. I need you to believe the part about the bag."

"He always threw it in the back," Erik said slowly. "He never let anybody put it in the bed of the truck. He said the cold warped his blades."

"And the back of a head. Short hair. A hand on the shifter."

"Mine was short too."

"You were singing," I said. "Against the passenger window. Badly. Some song about a tractor."

Erik went white.

"I always sang that song when I was drunk."

"I know. I used to beg you to stop."

He took two steps back from the tree.

Then he turned and walked to the truck so fast I had to run.

"Where are we going?"

"Saint Paul."

"Your game is tonight."

"Then he'd better be home."

Nils lived on the top floor of an old brick warehouse by the river.

His name was on the buzzer.

Erik leaned on it until the door clicked.

We took the stairs.

The apartment door was open when we got there.

Nils stood in it in a T-shirt and sweatpants, no prosthetic, on two crutches.

Behind him, at a kitchen island covered in printouts, a young woman with a laptop looked up.

His producer.

I knew her voice from the hold line.

"Big brother," Nils said. "And guest. I'm doing show prep."

"Send her home," Erik said.

"She stays. She's working."

"Fine."

Erik walked in past him.

I followed.

The apartment was all windows and bare brick.

There was a framed photo on the wall of Nils at nineteen in a draft-day jersey, grinning, both legs.

There was a bottle of vodka on the counter, half gone, at eleven in the morning.

"Who was driving?" Erik said.

Nils laughed.

"Is this a bit? Are you recording?"

"Who was driving my truck, Nils?"

"She was. Everybody knows she was. Dad pulled her out from behind the wheel."

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