Chapter 13: Fourteen Cars

We left Bayfield at seven, in the dark, with the heater roaring.

Ellie stood on the porch in her nightgown and a parka and hugged me so hard her glasses fell off.

"Hit him with the folder," she said.

"I'm going to read it to him," I said.

"That's worse. Do that."

I rode with the folder on my knees.

Ellie had printed everything the night before: eighty-four payments, the bank's letter, the typed page Clinton called a lease.

The coat box rode on the back seat with the seat belt buckled across it.

Stian did not say that was funny, because it wasn't to me.

The road south was empty and white.

The plow had been through, and I knew who had driven it.

I watched the trees go by and said nothing for twenty miles.

Stian kept both hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road.

He had said almost nothing either, and I knew his silences by now.

This one had a question in it.

"You're doing it again," I said.

"Doing what?"

"Leaving a silence on purpose."

"It's a habit from the plow."

"What are you thinking?"

He took a while.

"That a woman who stayed that long might be driving to a house she's about to walk back into," he said.

I turned in my seat to look at him.

"Is that what you think I'm doing?"

"It's what I'm afraid of."

"Good," I said. "At least you said it."

I put my hand over his on the gearshift.

My glove was off, and my fingers were cold.

"I'm going there to set a coat on a table," I said. "Then I'm going to read the numbers. Then I'm leaving."

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