Chapter 29: H-4

I got home at ten past eight and told him in the kitchen, standing up, with the aunts sent out to the garden.

"H-4," I said. "Mrs. Draycott. It was taped to a cooler in the Registry yard, and they loaded it into a cold van."

Ronan didn't say anything.

He set down the coffeepot.

He walked past me and up the stairs, and I followed him.

He stopped in the doorway of his mother's room, across the hall from mine.

Her cardigan still hung on the back of the chair.

"Eight years," he said. "I haven't moved that sweater in eight years."

"I know."

"She had the bed by the window. I stood at the foot of it, and Faulk shook my hand."

His voice stayed level, and that was worse than shouting.

"There was a cooler under it," he said. "I never looked under it."

He turned around and went down the stairs three at a time.

By the time I reached the porch he was a black wolf at the gate, and then he was gone down the dirt road.

I took the farm truck keys off the nail.

I found him a mile and a half down the road, at the second cattle guard.

He was a man again, lying on his side in the gravel with his knees drawn up.

His face was gray, and there was blood in his beard stubble.

"Ronan."

"The legs," he said. "Something's wrong with my legs."

I got down in the road and took his hand in both of mine.

It was cold.

Then it wasn't.

The heat came back into his fingers a bit at a time, and the color came back into his face.

He looked at our hands.

"I was fine at the gate," he said.

"You're fine now."

"I have to get to Brackett."

"Not like this. Not today."

"Mara."

"Get in the truck."

I didn't let go of his hand once on the drive back.

I drove with my left hand, and his lay in my right on the bench seat between us.

I did not let go of it in the yard, or on the stairs, or in his room, where I shut the door.

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