Chapter 16: Useful

Tobin didn't say anything for the first ten miles.

He drove with both hands on the wheel, and the sun went down over the cornfields, and I watched his jaw.

"You can say it," I said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you've been chewing on since the post office."

He looked down at his hands.

"I think I owe you something honest," he said. "And it isn't pretty."

"Go on."

"My last girlfriend asked me for a favor before she asked me for anything else.

"A file that needed a push.

"I gave it, and I was glad to."

"What happened?"

"She got in. She left in September."

He kept his eyes on the road.

"So for a week I've been thinking, first a girl needs a man with a stamp, and then she needs a date.

"And I keep waiting for the part where I find out what I'm for."

My throat hurt.

"You think I'm using you."

"I think you came to me because I was useful.

"I think you might not know it yet."

He glanced at me.

"I'd still have said yes. That's the stupid part."

I put my hand on his arm.

"Pull over."

"Ciara."

"Please."

He pulled onto the shoulder by a grain elevator.

I turned in my seat and took his face in both hands, and I made him look at me.

"I'm not using you."

"You asked me to a party because of a man who wronged you."

"I asked you because you didn't flinch.

"It was out before I could stop it, and I've never been so glad of anything."

His eyes moved over my face.

"The mouth rule," he said.

"It was never about you."

"Then who?"

I had been carrying it for two weeks.

I had carried it for sixty years, and I had told no one.

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