Chapter 19: What I Kept

Cillian's POV

On Friday I stood on a scaffold on Cedar Street and scraped old paint off a window frame.

I did not feel any of it.

My foreman came up the ladder with two coffees.

"You missed the inspection on Tuesday," he said.

"I know."

"You missed three inspections in October. You've never missed one in eleven years."

"I know. I'll fix it."

"I want my suit back," he said. "The charcoal one. I heard it was on TV."

"It was on an internet video."

"Same thing, now." He handed me a coffee. "Whatever you did, are you going to put it right?"

"I'm trying."

"Try with your hands, then. Not with your face."

He went back down.

That was the cost, put plain.

Three weeks of my own business with nobody at the wheel.

A sister who had not said a word to me since Sunday except "curb."

A woman who had come to my house, shouted at me, and let me touch her.

I had not earned that last one. I had known it on the stairs, and I had taken it anyway.

I climbed down at noon and drove to the shop.

She was out front on the sidewalk, filling a bucket from the hose.

She saw the truck, and her shoulders went up, and then they came down again.

"Dani's inside," she said. "She's pretending to count stems."

"I won't take long."

I took the folder from behind the seat. It was an ordinary brown folder, soft at the corners from being carried.

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