This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: June Ninth

Mara's POV

I read the row three times, and the words did not change.

Unit 4 diverted by supervisor. Reassigned to Burnside at Grand.

Caller: D. Ransom.

I knew that intersection. I had passed it ten thousand times, on my way to nothing.

"Non-injury collision," I said.

"Yes."

"She hit a parked car. That's what the report says. She was shaken up."

"Yes."

"He pulled the ambulance off your brother and sent it to a woman with a dented bumper."

"Nineteen minutes," Padraig said, very quietly. "That was how long the second unit took. It had to come from across the river."

I closed the folder.

My hands were steady. That surprised me.

"Who has seen this?" I said.

"Nobody. My mother doesn't know. I wanted to be sure of the name first."

"The name."

"The name on the log." He sat on the edge of the cot in his trousers, bare to the waist, watching me. "I found it eight months ago. I looked up the supervisor. Teale. Then I looked up the surgeon who operated that night. Kincaid."

I turned my head.

"And you found that we were married."

"In a hospital newsletter. A photograph, a charity run, two names under it. Colson Teale and Dr. Mara Kincaid."

"So you asked for me."

"Yes."

"You asked for me because you thought I was part of it."

"I thought you might be." He did not look away. "I thought you might have known. I thought the person who ran the dispatch desk and the person who ran the operating room went home to the same house every night, and one of them might have told the other."

It was so quiet that I heard the lantern hiss.

"You thought I knew," I said, "and covered it up."

"I thought it was possible. I came out here to find out."

"And you took me to bed."

"No." His voice went rough. "That was not part of it. I told you, on the roof, that I had something to say. I was trying to stop."

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