Chapter 16: His Brother's Grave

"In person," I said. "Good."

Reba lowered her window another inch.

"Good?"

"I've been waiting since February for somebody to ask me to my face."

The hearing was set for the Tuesday after the 600, in a conference room at the series office in Charlotte.

Nobody went up to the loft that night.

We sat in the barn office with Reba till two, making a list.

I had six days.

Daddy called the night nurse from the number on his icebox.

She called me back the same night, while I was eating cold pizza on the loft steps.

"I remember you," she said. "The engineer who drew on napkins all night. You fixed the squeak in my chair with a dime."

"Would you say it to men in suits?"

"Honey, I've said worse to surgeons."

The hospital mailed a copy of the visitor log to Daddy's house.

He drove it over himself in a gallon freezer bag, so it wouldn't get wet.

My name was on it twice for October fourteenth, at 9:02 at night and 6:10 in the morning, in my own bad handwriting.

I held it up to the work lights.

The old men passed it around.

Reba made pound cake and called it evidence.

Sutton was quiet all week.

He kept looking at me when he thought I wasn't watching, watchful and guarded.

Wednesday night his phone rang while we were bleeding the brakes.

He looked at the screen.

He let it ring three times.

Then he answered it and walked out the side door into the dark.

When he came back, he stood by the car with his hands in his pockets.

"That was Twyla," he said. "She wants to talk to me. Tonight. Alone."

"About what?"

"The hearing. She'll only say it to me." He took a breath. "She wants to meet at Daddy's grave."

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