Chapter 10: The Porch

Gabe parked at the curb in front of the Winslow house at four on Saturday afternoon and sat with his hands on the wheel.

Eli's text was still open on his phone.

Kessling's telling Dad tomorrow. I'm telling him first. Don't stop me.

Gabe had written back: Don't. Let me. And Eli had not answered.

He had practiced the speech for two hours in the car and dropped it somewhere around the second light.

What was left was one sentence, and he did not know how a man said it to his best friend.

Frank was on the porch with a half-built bird feeder across his knees and a beer sweating on the rail.

He lifted a hand without getting up.

"Gabe. You're early for tomorrow."

"I need to talk to you."

"Sit." Frank nodded at the other chair. "I'll get you a beer."

"I don't want a beer."

Frank looked at him over the feeder, and the easy look went out of his face.

"All right," he said. "Talk."

Gabe did not sit.

He stood at the top of the steps with the cold coming up through the soles of his shoes.

He had known this man since he was twelve years old.

Frank had taught him to drive in this very street, in a rusted green pickup, with one hand on the emergency brake.

Frank had stood next to him at his mother's funeral and had not said a word, only passed him a handkerchief.

Frank had stood in Gabe's kitchen the night his wife died and asked him to sit with the boy for an hour so he could breathe.

"It's about Eli," Gabe said.

"Is he hurt?"

"No. He's fine. He's at his place." Gabe made himself keep going. "Frank, I'm in love with your son."

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