Chapter 31: The Cider Stand

Lacey's POV

Byron called at eight that night from a rest stop on the interstate, and his voice was scraped flat.

"It's Brady," he said. "He's Ray."

I sat down on the edge of the bathtub with Poppy's wet towel in my lap.

"Tell me all of it."

He did, in order, without a single adjective.

The card on the refrigerator, and the hook in the y, and the silver sedan at the curb.

"I told him Saturday at ten," said Byron. "At the cider stand, in front of customers. I said bring the truth. He said yes."

"Did you hit him?"

"I wanted to."

"Did you?"

"No."

"Good," I said. "Come home. I'll make toast."

On Saturday morning the stand opened at nine, and by ten there were thirty people in line and a hay wagon full of children out by the pumpkins.

I worked the register with Poppy on my hip.

Byron poured, and he didn't say a word to anyone, and his hands were very steady.

At five past ten, a long silver sedan came up the gravel road.

It parked across the end of the stand, just as it had before.

A man got out in a gray overcoat, a ball cap and sunglasses, with his hands in his pockets.

He walked up to the counter.

The line went quiet, and I put Poppy's head against my shoulder.

"Take them off," I said.

"Lacey."

"The hat and the glasses. You've been wearing them in front of a sixteen-year-old since July."

Brady took off the sunglasses and folded them.

He took off the cap.

He was thinner than he had been on the club steps, and his sandy hair was long over his collar.

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