Chapter 22: Numbered Boards

I got to the house at seven the next morning, and Gabe's truck was already in the drive.

Glen's car was gone.

Helen had texted me at midnight. He is at a friend's in Coeur d'Alene. I changed my locks. I should have changed them six years ago.

I read it twice and did not answer.

I let myself in through the side gate with the key I still had.

The cedar deck stood in the early light, silver in places where the sun had weathered it.

Half of it was gone.

Boards lay stacked in the grass in neat rows, every nail pulled and dropped into a coffee can.

The hot tub sat on the bare joists with its cover off, empty, a blue plastic shell.

Gabe knelt on the frame in his work shirt with a pry bar, sweat dark down his back.

He did not look up.

"Mindy called last night," he said. "She said you wanted the deck gone. I wanted you to see it started when you got here."

"You didn't have to start at dawn."

"I wanted to do it before the sun got hot."

"That deck took you six weeks," I said.

"Seven."

"You told me it was the best thing you'd ever built."

"It is."

He set the pry bar down across his knees.

I walked along the edge of the stacked boards.

Each one was marked on the end in pencil, in his square capitals, with a number.

"You numbered them," I said.

"I'm going to use them."

"For what?"

"I don't know yet." He wiped his forehead with his forearm. "A bench, maybe. Something that doesn't belong to him."

I stood at the edge of the frame. My shoes were wet from the grass.

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