The Men Who Walked Out novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Not From You

Elliot's POV

Daphne came out of the Newport gate on foot at nine-forty, without her coat.

I had been parked across the road for two hours with the engine off and the radio low.

I got out and met her halfway, and she walked straight past me to the passenger door.

"Don't ask," she said. "Just drive."

I put my coat over her shoulders again, and she let me.

She shook the whole way down Bellevue Avenue.

It wasn't crying, and I didn't know what to call it.

I had known her four years across a lab hallway, and I had never seen her hands shake.

Her left hand gripped her right wrist in her lap.

"I need you to drive faster than you want to," she said.

I drove at the limit, because the road was icy, and she let me.

Somewhere past Providence she said one thing.

"Mom broke a wine glass in her hand. She didn't stop to look at it."

"Did she cut herself?"

"I don't know. I didn't stay."

I didn't ask what had caused it.

I thought I could guess part of it.

At two in the morning on the day this started, her father had called me.

"Elliot, I'm going to need a room," he'd said. "And I need you to keep your mouth shut about the reason."

I had kept my mouth shut for twelve years about the reason.

He had told me once, at a lab party, when I was twenty and he was stone sober and had clearly rehearsed it.

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