Chapter 45: After the Arrest

Nathaniel's POV

I caught my wife on the stairwell landing, between the fourth floor and the third, with her phone against her ear and her free hand shaking.

"Vermont state police," she was saying. "The Winslow farmhouse, on the dirt road past the cider barn. Please, a man may be there with fuel."

"Claire."

"Don't. Let me finish."

She gave them the address twice.

When she hung up, she stood very straight, with her eyes shut.

"Four men," she said. "He kept one in reserve. I should have counted them at the church."

"You counted two."

"I should have counted four."

I took her face in both hands.

"We are going to sit down on this step," I said, "and we are going to wait for them to call back, and you are not going to fall down these stairs."

We sat on the cold concrete, side by side.

She leaned her head against my shoulder, and I did not say anything, because I had run out of the right things.

Down in the car park, my father's van had pulled away from the curb a few minutes before.

I had stood by the ramp and watched it go, before I ran after her, and my chest had felt empty.

Her phone rang twenty minutes later.

She put it on speaker between our knees.

"Mrs. Rhodes?" a deep voice said.

"Winslow."

"Ma'am. This is a trooper with the Vermont state police." He cleared his throat. "I want to tell you first that your rose garden is fine."

She made a sound I had never heard.

"All forty-one," the trooper said. "I counted. They're a little dry."

"What happened?"

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