Chapter 22: Colin Alone

Colin came to the lab on Friday, at the end of the afternoon, carrying a cardboard box.

I saw him on the monitor first, standing under the streetlight with the box against his hip.

The oldest of the techs looked at the screen and then at me.

"Want me to tell him you're out?"

"No. I'll go down."

I stopped at my desk on the way.

In the top drawer, under a stack of old lab notebooks, lay a plain gold ring.

I had put it there on a Sunday night in March, and I hadn't touched it since.

I took it out and closed my hand around it.

He was on the sidewalk when I opened the street door. He didn't put the box down.

"Gen."

"Colin."

"I'm not here to ask for anything," he said, fast. "I wanted you to know that first."

"All right."

"They gave me an hour to clear my office. This is what I had."

He tipped the box toward me.

It held a mug, a framed photograph of his brother, and a stack of unopened mail with the rubber band still around it.

"I'm at a hotel. Mother is at the house. Her lawyers stopped answering her. The accountant found more than the ledger you have."

"I heard."

"She won't see me."

"I'm sorry for that," I said, and it surprised me to find it was true.

He looked at the unopened mail.

"I read the decree," he said. "Last night. Page by page. It's only four pages."

"I know."

"It says Petitioner, Genevieve Wrenfield VanBuren. It says the marriage is dissolved. It doesn't say anything about the kitchen."

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