Chapter 13: The Inside Man

Kurt drove me to the condo in the rental car he had picked up at the airport.

"I'll wait out here," he said.

"You don't have to."

"I know." He turned off the engine. "I'd like to see where you lived."

I had not been inside since Sunday night.

Dexter had three boxes stacked by the door, labeled in black marker: books, kitchen, winter.

He was in yesterday's shirt, and he had not been to bed.

"I'll be out by tonight," he said. "You gave me until Friday. I don't need it."

"Where will you go?"

"A hotel near my office. I can't stay at my mother's right now."

I went to the bedroom closet for my winter coat.

He stayed in the doorway with his hands in his pockets.

"Can I say one thing?" he asked. "It isn't an excuse."

"Go ahead."

"In six years you asked me about Lindy maybe a dozen times. Every time it was a charge. Why is she there. Why did you buy that. Why her."

He looked at the carpet.

"You never once asked me what I was hiding. If you had asked it plainly, I think I would have cracked."

I took the coat off its hanger and held it against my chest.

"I asked what I could stand to ask," I said. "If I asked the real question, you would have answered it, and I was scared of the answer."

"So was I."

"Then there are two of us. It doesn't let you off."

"I'm not asking it to."

He crossed the room to the window and picked up his phone from the sill.

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