Chapter 16: Speakerphone

Nate's POV

I had told myself I was going to Boise for lumber.

I had not told Jenna Rask anything.

My aunt had forwarded me the beach video on Sunday, with the message, "Is this our house?", and by Monday it had been passed around the whole lake.

Everyone in McCall had an opinion about the pharmacist who stood up at a picnic table and said her husband's name.

I had no opinion.

I had the file from Tuesday.

It held the office call log with his number on it three times.

It also held the slip from the card reader that showed two declines.

I put the folder in my truck on Saturday morning and drove two hours with the radio off.

Brooke Teller's shop had a pink awning and a line of women in cardigans on the sidewalk.

I stood at the back, beside a table of candles, in the same green work shirt I had worn all week.

I had told myself I was not there for her.

Then I saw the back of her head, light brown hair, shoulders straight, and I knew I had lied to myself in the truck.

I watched her stand up in front of fifty strangers and say what Colin had done, in a level voice, with her mother holding her wrist.

I thought: she is better at this than anyone I have ever seen.

I also thought what I had been thinking for a week.

I had stood in a married woman's yard once before, and I had been on the wrong side of it.

I had seen what happens when the husband cries.

The wife goes back, because she is kind.

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