Chapter 5: The Will

I read it twice with Zane's hand still in my shorts.

Then I started laughing, high and wrong, and couldn't stop.

Zane slid his hand out and pulled my T-shirt down over me as gently as he'd pushed it up.

"A will," I said. "I'm twenty-three. He wants me to write a will."

"He wants you to write his will," Zane said.

He held me against his bare chest in the dark cab until I stopped shaking.

He didn't ask to finish what we'd started.

That was the moment I knew I'd come back for it.

Dwight made dinner the next night.

He did that when he wanted something, and he wanted something every night that summer.

Steaks on the grill, corn and my mom's potato salad.

Red wine for the adults, and sparkling water for me, "since you've been so tired."

Gage sat across from me at the patio table with his back to the pool.

He'd showered after a twenty-four-hour shift and his curls were still wet.

He hadn't looked at me once since I sat down.

He'd heard about the truck.

I could tell by the way he held his knife.

Dwight came out of the slider holding a blue folder.

"Before dessert," he said. "Grown-up stuff."

He set it in front of me and opened it with one finger.

LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF LAINE KESSICK.

"Just a simple one," he said. "Everything goes to your mom. In case."

"In case what?" I asked.

"Sweetheart." He sat down beside me and rested his hand on the back of my chair.

"You'll be working nights in an ER in Phoenix. Driving home at seven in the morning, exhausted. Things happen."

"I see it every day in my practice. Young people think they've got forever."

My mom reached over and squeezed my hand.

"It's smart, baby," she said. "It's what your dad would've wanted."

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