Chapter 6: Roses

Boone came at nine the next morning with a dozen grocery-store roses and his eyes swollen shut.

I was on the shop floor with a belt sander when his truck pulled in.

I finished the pass I was on, switched it off, and let the dust settle.

He stood in the roll-up door with the roses held out in front of him.

"I brought your ring back," he said.

"You left it on my step in the middle of the night, with my phone line cut."

He flinched.

"That wasn't me," he said. "I mean, I brought it. Hoyt told me to cut the line. He said you needed to be quiet for a few days, so you'd think."

"Think what?"

"That you were alone out here."

I put the sander down on the bench.

"You cut my phone line because Hoyt told you to," I said. "And you're standing in my father's shop."

"I didn't want to."

"But you did."

"He's the president."

He said it flat and certain, the way he always had.

Then his face broke, and he started to cry.

It was ugly crying, with his shoulders going and the roses shaking.

I had seen him cry exactly once before, at the courthouse, when the clerk said husband and wife.

I had thought it meant something.

"Dani, Lacey's a mistake," he said. "She's nothing. It started when you were buried in the build, and you were never home, and I was lonely."