Chapter 6: Terms and Conditions

I did not shout at my father.

I wanted to, and I could not.

"For two months," I said. "I sat in your kitchen and cried about this engagement. You made me tea."

"I know."

"You let me think I was the only one who knew something was wrong."

"I know, Joanna."

"Why didn't you say it when it was only six million?"

"Because it was your life or my house, and I was a coward."

He did not cry.

He just stood there in a borrowed jacket, an old man holding a chair.

"You're not a coward," Hayes said from the door. "You were a man with a gun to your head."

My father looked at him.

"She has a place here," Hayes said. "So do you, Mr. Sayre. There's a loft."

"I can't."

"It has a window and a space heater," Hayes said. "Tonight you sleep."

I did not say yes.

I also did not say no.

That night Dale slept in the loft over the workbench, and the whole shed smelled of cedar and old rope.

I lay in the bed, and Hayes lay on his camping mattress by the stove, and neither of us slept.

At two I gave up.

I padded into the kitchenette in my socks.

He was already there, standing at the sink in a gray undershirt and jeans, with a glass of water in his hand.

The cot had not come yet.

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