Chapter 10: What Renzo Did

Renzo's POV

I left before she woke the second time.

She had gone back to sleep after the process server.

She lay curled on her side with one hand open on the pillow where I had been.

I stood at the door of the back bedroom for longer than I should have.

Then I told the old man in the shed to sit on the porch with the shotgun he kept for geese.

I wrote four lines on the back of a boat invoice.

"Gone to see my father. Back by dark. Lock the door. Eat something. R."

I propped it against the kettle.

It was a bad thing to do, and I did it anyway.

She would have wanted to come, and she would have been right.

I could not let her walk back into that house with a court paper in her hand and no sleep.

The drive took two hours.

I spent every mile of it hearing her say it in the cab of the truck.

Not slowly.

For five years I had read a chat I could not answer.

For six I had pictured the woman my brother married nodding politely at jokes she could not follow.

I had thought she was a pleasant stranger who looked through me.

She had been looking through everyone, because she was afraid.

Last night she had looked straight at me and said yours.

I gripped the wheel and drove faster.

The house was quiet when I pulled up.

My father sat in the glassed-in porch at the back, where he took his coffee.

He had a blanket over his knees and the lawyer's folder beside him.

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