Chapter 15: Steam and Sawdust

He walked back to his Audi without another word.

He was on the phone before his door shut.

I stood in the gravel and watched the gate camera send me a picture of his taillights.

When my father's truck came back at noon, I was still standing there.

"What happened?" Dad said.

"Nothing. Jarrod came by."

Coby got out of the passenger side with a bag of sandpaper.

He looked at my face and then at the tire marks in the gravel.

"What did he want?"

"Later," I said.

"No," Coby said. "Now. You always say later and then it's never."

My father took the sandpaper out of his hands and went into the shop without a word.

So I told him.

All of it, on the end of the dock, with our feet over the river.

The fakes. The supplier his father didn't ask about. The grandmother's wrist.

And the plane to Connecticut, if I opened my mouth before the gala.

He listened with his jaw tight.

When I finished he picked a splinter off the dock and threw it in the water.

"So he's using me," he said.

"Yes."

"Like a hostage."

"Like a bargaining chip. It's a little less dramatic."

He didn't laugh.

"Then don't wait for me," he said.

"Coby."

"I mean it. Go tell everybody. I'll get on the plane. I'll run away from Connecticut. I already know how."

"I know you do."

"So don't wait."

I looked at him.

Six feet one, sixteen years old, and he'd never once in his life offered to be the one who got hurt.

"I'm not waiting for you," I said. "I'm waiting for proof."

"You have proof. You have a broken chair."

"I have proof the chairs are fake. I don't have proof she's the one making them."

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