When the Road Went Silent novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: The Envelope
"Who had a key?" Kayla said.
Cade smiled with half his mouth.
"Ask the man who paid your rent."
"Boone's driver brought groceries twice," she said. Her voice shook. "He left them on the counter. I was never alone with Boone for a minute, Cade, and you know it."
"Do I?"
"You know it, because you're a liar and that was the best one you had left."
Nobody on the porch said a word.
The old man came down the steps, took Cade by the back of his vest and walked him to the sedan.
"Go sleep in your car," he said. "Come back at noon tomorrow. You'll be wanted."
Cade went.
The test was drawn at eight the next morning in the clubhouse kitchen.
A nurse came in her own car, and she was the old man's daughter, and she took blood from Kayla's arm and a swab from Cade's cheek while twelve men watched.
By noon on Thursday every man in the club was in the bar.
It was my thirtieth birthday.
Nobody had said so out loud.
I stood behind the bar with my father's ring on my thumb, and Ward sat on the stool at the end with a clean white bandage on his forearm and his eyes on me.
Kayla sat at a table near the door with her hands folded over her stomach.
Cade stood by the wall with his arms crossed.
He had shaved.
It made him look younger and sicker.
The lab courier came through the door at two minutes past twelve, with a flat white envelope.
"Pellham?" he said.
"Here."
I signed, and the courier left, and I held the envelope for a moment.
"Maxine," Kayla said. "Please. Read it."
"I'd rather the old man did."
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