Chapter 13: Lot 7731-B

Rowan's POV

Leah came down the garage ramp at a walk, and I knew from the way she held her bag that she had something.

I had the van door open before she reached it.

She got in, shut the door, and said, "Take me to the studio. Don't talk yet."

I drove.

She sat with both hands flat on her knees and looked straight ahead, and I kept my eyes on the road.

In the studio lot her dead car sat where it had sat for two weeks, under a skin of wet leaves.

She got out and popped the trunk, and I saw her hands for the first time.

They were steady, and that frightened me more than shaking would have.

She lifted out a grocery bag, took out a white carton, and opened the flap.

Five small glass vials lay in a row, and each had a strip of tape on it.

Every strip carried a date in square black capitals.

"His handwriting," she said. "He wrote the date on every one, every night. I thought it was love."

"Leah."

"Brooke says these are water." She shut the flap. "I need someone who can tell me by looking."

I knew who that was.

"Fran," I said. "She ran a hospital lab for thirty years. I'll drive."

It took forty minutes.

Fran opened her door in her flannel robe with a spatula in her hand, took one look at her niece, and put the spatula down on the radiator.

"Kitchen," she said. "Both of you."

Leah set the carton on the table beside the sugar bowl.

She told it in five sentences, level and fast, and Fran did not interrupt once.

Then Fran put on the glasses that hung on her cord and picked up a vial.