This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Ben's Bridge

Colson asked to meet at the Ross Island Bridge, and Padraig said yes before I could tell him not to.

"He picked the place," I said in the car. "That's a move."

"It's the only place he could have picked."

We parked on the shoulder at the foot of the ramp at ten at night.

The river was black beneath it. Every few seconds a truck went over the grating with a long hum.

There was a bend in the guardrail where it had been replaced, and the new steel was brighter than the old.

Colson stood next to it in a plain jacket with a bunch of supermarket flowers hanging from his hand.

He saw us and straightened.

"Thank you for coming," he said.

"You asked for ten minutes," Padraig said. "I'm counting."

Padraig stopped a few feet from the rail.

I stood at his shoulder, and his hand settled at the small of my back and stayed.

I noticed that. I noticed it more than I noticed Colson.

"I went to Eugene," Colson said.

Padraig's whole body went still.

"I didn't go in. I got as far as the gravel road. There was a dog on the steps, and I couldn't get out of the truck." He looked at the flowers. "I sat there for an hour. Then I drove home."

"That's not a sorry," Padraig said.

"I know."

"That's a man who sat in a truck."

"I know."

"Say what you came to say, Mr. Teale."

Colson took a long breath.

"I'm sorry about your brother."

He said it quietly, and it sounded like something he had practiced in a mirror.

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