Chapter 15: The Price of Waiting

The detective called me at nine that morning.

The same one who'd taken the bartender's video.

"Mrs. Strahan," she said. "Do you have Elise Strahan's phone?"

"I did until five a.m. My sister took it off my nightstand while I slept."

A pause.

"Your sister is married to the man who reported it stolen."

"Yes."

"That's a very Pittsburgh family," the detective said, and hung up.

For three days I didn't leave my father's house except to run.

The comments followed me everywhere anyway.

Thief. Gold digger. Next body off the roof.

Kaylee didn't answer her phone. My stepmother hummed in the kitchen and made pot roast.

Dad stopped eating at home.

On Sunday night my bolt-up partner came over with a six-pack and sat on the porch steps with me.

"He's doing something tomorrow," she said.

"Who?"

"Your husband. His office called every gang on the job. Ten a.m. on the deck. Press invited."

"What's he doing?"

"Nobody knows." She handed me a can. "You coming?"

"He didn't call me."

She looked at me sideways.

"Since when do you wait to be called?"

Monday morning the sky over the North Shore was hard and blue.

Strahan Point had been shut for five days.

The hoist ran for the first time since the sling, carrying ironworkers instead of steel.

Forty of us came up onto the deck of thirty-eight in our hard hats.

My gang stood together by the north column, by the dent in the deck where the gang box used to be.

The apprentice stood close to me and didn't say "ma'am" once.

The press came up in two loads, pale and holding on to everything.

Six cameras. A dozen phones.

Hayden came up in the second load, with the board chair beside him turning his cufflink.

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