Chapter 19: Do It Where I Can See

I opened the front door before he could knock.

Dean stood on the porch in the cold with his keys in his fist.

"I saw the light," he said.

"I saw you see it."

"I'll go."

"Come in, Dean."

He wiped his boots on the mat three times and came up the stairs behind me with a hand on the rail.

He stopped in the doorway of the spare room.

The night-light cast a thin yellow line across the floor, and across the white slats of the crib.

He didn't move for a long time.

"That's his crib," he said.

"Yes."

"You put him in Wyatt's bed."

"I put him in a bed. It was standing in pieces against the wall."

"Di."

"I built it myself. Connie's grandson did the bolts."

He took one step in, and his shoulders came down hard.

"Do you know what that does to me?"

"I know exactly what it does."

"Then why?"

"Because I can't keep a crib in a room for three weeks and not know what to do with it."

I kept my voice low.

"Because Delilah knocked on my door and asked me for one night."

I swallowed.

"And because he was crying, and the only thing in this house to put him in was your son's bed."

"My son," Dean said.

"Yes. One of them is sleeping in it."

He turned to look at me.

He didn't shout, and he never did.

He only looked, and his eyes were full.

"You're punishing me," he said.

"No."

"It feels like it."

"If I wanted to punish you, I'd have let you in at ten and made you carry the bolts."

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