Chapter 8: The Gatepost

Abraham's POV

I went out to check the camera on the gatepost at six in the morning, before the dew was off the gravel.

It was a good camera, motion-triggered, with night vision and a card slot I checked every hour.

My sister watched from the workshop door in her bathrobe with her arms folded.

"You'd never put up a camera in your life until last night," Roz said. "You don't lock your own truck."

"It's a gatepost."

"It's Joanna's gatepost now, isn't it?"

I tightened a screw I'd already tightened twice.

"Abe. She's married. She's got a kid. She's got a husband who calls the police on her."

"I know all that."

"Then keep your hands where she can see them."

"They're on a screwdriver," I said.

Roz laughed, a little sadly, and went back inside for coffee.

She was right, and I knew it, and it made no difference.

I'm forty-one, and I've been divorced for six years.

I had made up my mind a long time ago that I was done wanting things.

Then Roz had called me at midnight on Halloween and told me what had happened on a school stage.

I sat in my truck outside her house until six in the morning.

Then I rang her bell with a toolbox and a story about a sink.

There was one more thing, and I hadn't told anyone, not even Roz.

Three nights in a row since she moved in, a white pickup with a dealership logo had parked at the end of my lane with its lights off.