Chapter 18: One Night

"Kept you from what?" I said.

Dean looked at the card in my hand and not at me.

"Sunday," he said. "At the table. In front of all of them, like you said."

"You didn't say that."

"I'm saying it now. Give me till Sunday, Di, and I'll tell you everything, and you can watch the drive after."

"Why Sunday?"

"Because if I say it here, I'll say it small. I need the room to hear it."

I studied his face.

For once it didn't look like a man hiding.

It looked like a man who was frightened of the sound of his own voice.

"Sunday," I said. "If you break it, I walk, and I take the drive to the sheriff."

"I won't."

I put the card in my coat, and I left him on the cold grass with his son's stone.

Delilah came to the house on Alder Street that same night, at ten.

She stood on the porch in the cold with the baby in a car seat and a diaper bag on her shoulder.

She looked like she'd been crying for a week.

"I can't do this," she said, before I'd even opened the door all the way.

"Do what?"

"Tonight. Will you take him? Just tonight."

"Delilah."

"I haven't slept in four days."

Her mouth shook.

"I stand over his bassinet in the dark, checking he's breathing. After the ear infection I can't stop."

"That's what new mothers do."

"It's not only that. I keep seeing that other night, and I think..."

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