Chapter 7: The Grain Operator's Son

"Take me upstairs," I said.

Jonas walked beside me without touching my arm, and I counted the stairs aloud so he would know I did not need him.

In my sitting room I shut the door and stood with my back against it.

"Whose son are you?"

The silence stretched.

I heard rain on the glass.

"Sit," he said.

"I'd rather stand."

"Then I'll stand too."

He took a breath that shook at the bottom.

"Thirteen years ago, there was an explosion at the Northeast grain elevator."

"Dust in the air, one spark."

"Four men died."

I knew it.

Every Haugland knew it.

My father had gone to all four funerals and cried at the last one.

"One of them was my father," Jonas said.

"He ran the lift on the night shift."

"I was twenty-one, in basic."

"My mother called me in the barracks."

"I didn't get home until the burial."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"Not yet."

The words came out of him flat and slow.

"The company said it was a freak accident."

"The state said it was an act of God."

"We got a check."

"It was big, and my mother cashed it because she had two other kids at home and no pension."

"She never touched a penny of it after the first month."

"Why?"

"Because the letter with the check had a clause that said we couldn't ask questions."

I felt the floor tilt a little.

"Seven years later I was out of the Army, working security in St. Paul, and I met a man who'd been a safety inspector for the state."

"He told me he'd written a report about the Northeast elevator two months before the blast."

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