Chapter 9: The Thirty-First

We walked the river on Saturday afternoon with two cups of hot cider from the stand at the levee.

The Ohio was brown and wide and slow.

The high-water marks were painted on the flood wall in white lines, each with a year beside it.

I had learned to read those marks before I could read books.

Alister walked on the street side of me, as he always had, and neither of us had said anything for a block.

"The judge's clerk wants me in Chicago on the twentieth," I said at last. "The trial runs two weeks."

"I know. You told me twice."

"I'm telling you again."

"Then go." He said it evenly. "It's your job. You do it well, and they need you. I'd think less of you if you didn't."

I stopped walking.

A barge was moving upriver with a low engine sound, and the wake slapped at the stone.

"You said that before," I said.

"Said what?"

"Go. You said go."

He turned and looked at me.

The wind had pulled a piece of his hair across his forehead, and the gray at his ears looked silver in the light.

"Odalys..."

"The night before the bus." My cider was cooling in my hand.

"I sat in my mother's kitchen until three in the morning with my bag packed. I wanted you to come to the back door."

"I did come," he said.

"You came and told me I was right to go," I said.

"You were right," he said.

"You didn't ask me to stay."

He didn't move.

I had never said it out loud.

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