Chapter 9: The Tin

Conall's POV

Catriona called me at nine on Sunday night, and I answered before the first ring finished.

"Don't talk," she said. "Listen."

I sat down on the edge of the cot in the pack hall office.

She told it straight through, the voice she used on frightened animals.

I heard it all the way to the end without a sound.

"No," I said.

"I'm not asking you to believe it. I'm telling you what he said."

"Lorna loves that boy."

"I know she does."

"She buried her husband. She has nobody."

"Conall. Check the tin."

I put the phone down on the blanket, and my hand did not feel like mine.

Then I picked it up again.

"Tell me about the fevers," Catriona said, very quietly. "When did they start?"

I didn't want to answer.

I thought of Tobin's fourth birthday, and the cake with the dinosaur on it.

Lorna called at six, crying, and I left the candles unlit in my own kitchen.

I thought of the school play.

I thought of the night Tobin had the croup.

I sat in Lorna's kitchen with a sick child on my lap who wasn't mine.

I thought of the stone.

There were a dozen others I could name.

I had never once put them in a row.

"Every time you had something with him," Catriona said. "Every time."

"It's a coincidence."

"Is it?"

I didn't answer.

"I'm going to hang up," she said. "Please go and look."

I drove to Lorna's at ten.

She wasn't home.

A note on the door said she'd taken Emmett to her mother's for the night.

The back door was never locked, and hadn't been in seven years.

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