Chapter 6: Pickup Line

My father left the engine running and walked up to the porch without looking at Sawyer.

"Stevie. Get your things."

"Dad, it's nine at night. Poppy's asleep."

"Then I'll carry her to the truck."

"You will not."

He stopped on the bottom step, a few feet from Sawyer, and I saw his hands shaking.

My father was sixty years old. He had hauled marine supplies for forty of them. I had never once seen his hands shake.

"Hugh," Sawyer said.

It was only his name, said flat and quiet.

My father's head came around.

The two men looked at each other, and something passed between them that I could not read.

"Why are you here?" Sawyer said.

"My daughter is sleeping in a shack with a split lip."

"I know where she is. I fixed her light."

"Then bring her home."

"I'm not the one who has to," Sawyer said. "She doesn't want to come."

"She's a Rutledge. She has a house."

"She's your daughter," Sawyer said. "She can decide."

My father went gray.

I thought he was angry at Sawyer. I thought it was the lip.

I did not understand then that it was fear.

"Dad," I said. "You need to go."

"Stevie."

"I'm not coming back tonight. Go home."

He stood there another long moment with the engine running behind him.

Then he turned and walked to the truck, and he drove away fast enough to throw gravel against the porch.

Sawyer watched the taillights until they were gone.

His face had gone cold and still.

"What was that?" I asked.

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