Chapter 20: The Gate

Nate's POV

I reached the gate before anyone else did, and I put my hand on the top rail.

The latch was not locked.

I held it shut anyway, so that Gail Rask could see my hand there.

She stood on the gravel side with her car door open and the engine ticking.

She wore no visor and no coral lipstick.

Her blond hair had been slept on, and her blouse was buttoned one hole off.

"Mr. Eklund," she said. "Good morning."

"Mrs. Rask. You're not on the booking."

"I know that."

She looked past me, up the lawn, at the porch where the pancake plates still sat on the rail.

"I'd like the east room for a week," she said. "If it's free. I want to talk to Jenna's mother."

"It isn't free. She slept in it last night."

"Then another room."

"The booking is Jenna's, and it ends tomorrow at noon."

I had said those words to this woman's son on the phone on a Tuesday.

They had not sounded any different to me then.

"Colin sent me," Gail said.

She put her hand on the other side of the rail, next to mine.

"He wants the papers held back. He says if Jenna would only talk to me, she'd see sense."

"Then say that from where you're standing."

"That's what he sent me to say."

She stared at my hand on the latch.

"It isn't why I drove two hours with no breakfast."

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