Chapter 10: The Night Before

Bree was spending the night at the hospital, in the chair beside her daughter's incubator.

My son slept in the loft above the kitchen with the monitor glowing on the table.

I told Ansel everything about Imogen while he stood at the stove stirring soup nobody wanted.

He listened to the end without interrupting.

Then he told me what the engineer had said.

The drive was in his shirt pocket.

He put it on the table between us and left his hand over it.

"It has Dalton's voice on it," he said. "Giving the order."

"Don't play it."

"Calla..."

"Not for me." I looked at the little black stick. "I've heard enough from him."

"Then who?"

"Everyone else. Tomorrow, at two o'clock."

"In the hall."

"In front of all of them."

He nodded slowly.

"Then it's decided," he said.

"It's decided."

The soup scorched on the stove.

He reached over to turn off the burner, and I stood up.

I had not planned this part.

I only knew I did not want to lie down alone in a house with a man I had kissed on a porch.

"Rule one," Ansel said quietly. "You said I don't touch you."

"I did."

"Is it still a rule?"

I walked around the table and took his hand off the drive.

I turned it over and put it flat on my stomach, on the soft, loose skin still marked from my son.

"Break it," I said.

His breath went out of him.

"The doctor said six weeks," I said. "For everything. I was very clear with her. She never said anything about the rest."

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