Chapter 6: No Names

I turned the phone around and let Eli read it.

He read it once, and the heat went out of his face.

"Who sent that?"

"I don't know the number. I think it's Bianca."

"Who is Bianca?"

"The friend who got in the Jeep with my boyfriend."

"Ex-boyfriend."

"Ex-boyfriend," I said, and it was easier to say with his hands still on my waist.

He took his hands away and I missed them at once.

He stepped back and read the message again, a muscle working in his jaw.

"She's right," he said. "You don't know whose town this is."

"Whose is it?"

"Winnie's. The fishermen's. The ferry's." He handed the phone back. "Not hers."

"That isn't what she meant."

"No."

"What did she mean?"

He did not answer.

The wind threw rain against the tin roof, and the lantern guttered and recovered.

He stood with the whole width of the shed between us.

I looked at the man who had kissed me, and I decided.

"Okay," I said. "Here are my rules."

"You have rules."

"I've had four years of someone else's rules. I want to make one set." I ticked them off on my fingers. "No past. No names. Nothing from before."

"Before what?"

"Before this week. Before the pump. Before whatever's behind that look on your face."

"And?"

"I won't ask you who called. You don't ask me who texted."

He was quiet for so long that I thought I had lost him.

"That's a very good rule," he said finally.

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