This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 7 of 24
Chapter 7: The Visitor
Colson got off the supply truck at eight in the morning, in the middle of the team's daily briefing.
He was wearing the wrong shoes.
They were city sneakers, white, and the mud of the road had already swallowed them to the ankle.
He carried a duffel bag in one hand and a paper cup of tea in the other.
Twenty-two people stood in a half circle on the basketball court with their coffee, and every one of them turned to look.
"Mara," he said.
"No," I said.
"I haven't said anything yet."
"You flew thirty hours to say it. The answer is no."
Bess, beside me, took a slow sip of her tea and said nothing, which was the loudest thing she could have done.
Colson put the duffel down.
"I need two minutes. Please. In front of anyone you want."
"Then say it here."
He looked at the half circle of strangers.
He had never been a man who could say hard things to a room. He ran dispatch for a county. He talked to people through a headset, in the dark.
"I've been a bad husband," Colson said.
Nobody breathed.
"I know that. I took leave. Unpaid. I've told the service I need a month." His voice cracked. "I called Chantal on the plane and told her she can't call me at night anymore, not for anything. I blocked her number. I mean it, Mar."
It cost him something to say that, and I could see how much.
For a moment, I felt sorry for him.
Then I thought of the eight years.
The cake with the candle. The calendar he had read without asking. The thing he had made me promise, in a parked car, with his arm around me.
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