Chapter 20: Seven Days of Hers

Brett's POV

I spent that night in the truck, parked across the street from our house.

The porch light was on.

At nine the kitchen light went off.

At ten the one upstairs went off, and I sat with a thermos and a blanket from the jobsite and nothing to do but think.

I thought about the hobby line.

I'd told Lorena it hurt, and she'd answered that she was trying to impress a woman in a suit.

That was true.

It was also true that I'd carried it for a year and a half and pulled it out whenever I wanted to feel owed.

I thought about the way I had gone quiet whenever I didn't like a thing.

I had called it keeping the peace.

My father had done it too, and my mother had died waiting for him to say something.

At two in the morning I understood that I hadn't been waiting for Lorena to confess.

I had been waiting for a reason to stop trying, and Shelby handed me five weeks of them.

I did not sleep.

At seven the front door opened, and Lorena came down the porch steps in her green coat, with two paper cups.

She crossed the street and knocked on the passenger window.

I leaned over and opened the door, and I didn't say anything.

She got in.

She held out one of the cups.

"Chamomile," she said. "I looked it up too."

It was the first thing she had made a joke of since the auction.

I took it, and my hands weren't quite steady.

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