Chapter 12: What Donovan Did

Dalton's men dragged him back to his car, and the three cars went away down Eastern Avenue with their lights swinging across the fence.

Noreen drove the nurse and the duffel to a Stroud house with a locked door and a cot.

The heavy man went with her.

That left me and Donovan in the back seat of his car, in the gray before dawn, with the engine off.

"Tell me," I said.

"Billie."

"You promised. You said even if it's ugly."

He sat looking at his own hands.

He had never looked small to me before.

"The night before your father died," he said, "I sat with him."

"You were there."

"For one hour. He called me at six.

"He said the nurse wasn't in until eleven, and he wanted to see my face again before he went."

Donovan's throat moved.

"I went. He was in the bed, very thin. He talked about you the whole hour."

"What did he say?"

"That you laugh with your whole mouth. That you hate shoes.

"That you cried at a hamster funeral when you were nine, and made a coffin out of a matchbox."

I put my hand over my face.

"Then he asked me to take you."

"Take me where?"

"Claim you. For real, he said, before the Latrobes moved.

"He'd watched Alden for a year and knew what he was. He said you'd never survive that family alone."

Donovan's voice stayed level, but his hands didn't.

"I told him no."

"Why?"

"Because I wasn't going to take a woman who didn't know my name."

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