Chapter 17: Nobody Else Was Here

By nightfall the producer had pulled Colson and Tiffany off the ridge for questioning.

"Dad said never again" had been played eleven million times.

I walked up to the lodge without my crutch, one slow step at a time.

Keir opened the door before my hand reached it.

"You shouldn't be walking," he said.

"I wanted to."

He stepped back, and I came in.

The stove was lit, and the black ledger lay shut on the table.

"Sit down, Keir. I have to tell you something, and I need you not to say anything until I finish."

He sat in the chair by the stove.

I stayed on my feet, with my back against the table.

"I've done this before," I said. "All of it. The shed, the lock, Colson's voice. I died in there, the first time."

He didn't move.

"Nobody came. I cried for him for hours on air, and before morning I stopped being cold."

I made myself keep going.

"Then I woke up the second the bar clicked, with my leg open and the same camera over the door."

I waited for his face to change.

It didn't. It went very still.

"You believe me," I said.

"Yes."

"You haven't asked for proof."

"You never once cried in front of me." His voice was rough. "You looked at the camera and told four million people to remember."

He shook his head slowly.

"That's what a person does who has already been through it."

"Nobody came the first time."

"Then I was in the truck," he said, "and I didn't come."

I hadn't thought of it that way.

"I don't know that," I said.

"I do." He looked at his hands. "In that life I waited for a better sentence, and I got one."

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