Chapter 9: What He Gave

He came at noon the next day, alone, and he stopped at the white line.

"Orson says one hour," Duncan said.

"Orson says a lot of things."

"He says it with his arms folded. I believed him."

Orson, forty feet back on the path with a rifle he didn't need, did not look up from his phone.

I sat down on the bench at the end of the bridge, where the planks met the Cold Creek bank.

Duncan stayed standing.

"You said you'd answer everything," I said.

"I know."

"Why do you go to her?"

He looked at his hands for a long time.

"Your father asked me to," he said.

I hadn't expected that.

"Three months before he died," Duncan said.

"You were out of the room getting him water. He took my wrist, which he never did."

"What did he say?"

"'Keep Chelsea alive. Hazel is strong. Chelsea isn't. Promise me.'"

"And you promised."

"I was twenty-nine, and I'd have promised him the moon."

My throat was tight.

My father had been a gentle, tired man, and I could hear him say it.

He had never once asked me to keep anyone alive.

"Go on," I said.

"The night of the ambush, you were hit across the back, and I didn't see it."

"The wire was silver."

"You were standing, and you said it was a scratch. So I let the healers look at you after."

He made himself stop.

"I was looking at Chelsea."

I remembered that night differently.

I remembered running for Duncan with a burning shoulder, and I remembered him running past me.

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