Chapter 8: Elio's POV

Elio's POV

I drove her home the six blocks, and neither of us said a word.

She sat with her hands in her lap and looked straight ahead at the road.

When I stopped at the green awning she said, "Thank you for the ledgers," and got out before I could answer.

She went in through the side door, and I watched the light come on over the stairs.

Then I saw the car.

A black sedan sat across Atwells Avenue with its engine off.

I knew the car, and I knew the man behind the wheel without having to see his face.

Dominic had parked where he could see her window.

He didn't get out, and he didn't leave.

I turned my headlights off and sat in the truck.

We looked at each other across thirty feet of empty street.

We had once shared a lunch table, and I thought about getting out.

I had thought about it every day for twelve years.

I stayed where I was.

Near three he started his engine and drove away, and only then did I go back to the yard.

The lock on the trailer door had been cut.

It was a clean cut, made with a bolt cutter, and nothing inside had been taken.

The desk drawers were open.

Every box of my father's receipts had been turned out on the floor.

The photo of him with the trout lay face down.

I stood in the doorway for a long minute.

Then I took off my right boot and shook it, and my old flip phone fell into my hand.

It was scratched and taped at the hinge.

My father had kept it in a kitchen drawer for twelve years.

I had carried it in my boot since the week we buried him.

I put it in my jacket and sat down on the cot.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Protected My Baby's Killer, So I Left Him from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.