Chapter 13: Seven Hours North

Jesse's POV

I slept in my truck at her gate, because she had told me to go home and home was the one place I couldn't stand.

Hattie came down the drive at first light with her boots unlaced.

She had a square of pencil paper in her fist.

She put it in my hand and said nothing.

I read it twice.

HAT. IF YOU FIND THIS CALL ME. COME GET HER BEFORE SHE DOES.

"He sewed it inside the horse," I said. "Four times a year I sat across from him, and he never said a word about it."

"He knew you'd tell Lottie."

"I wouldn't have."

"You'd have told her the way you tell her everything, Jesse. Out of habit."

That landed, and I let it.

She dialed the number on speaker and held the phone between us.

It rang six times.

A man's voice said, "This is Dean. Leave it."

It was lower than the voice I remembered, and slower.

"It's Hat," she said, and her voice broke on the second word. "Call me."

She hung up and wiped her face with her wrist, fast.

"Go get him," she said.

"He's seven hours from here."

"Then you'd better start."

"I'll be at the preschool at two thirty first."

She looked at me for a long moment.

"And tomorrow?"

"I can't promise tomorrow. I won't tell you I'll be there and then not be."

Something eased in her face, very slightly.

"That's the first honest answer you've given me about a schedule in five years," she said.

"It's a low bar."

"It's the one you've got."

I stood in the preschool yard at two thirty with a cowboy hat full of dandelions Daisy had picked for me.

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