Chapter 18: One Rule

A sheriff's deputy arrived ten minutes later, looked at the crowd, and decided the quarry fire was over.

Rhett's friends loaded him into the back of the football boy's truck.

Nobody went with him but the driver, and nobody waved.

Mrs. Hartigan drove us back to Garrity Falls without saying a word, and she stopped in front of my mother's house with the engine still running.

"Put ice on that," she said to me. "Erin. Go with him and help."

"Mom?"

"I'm not a fool. I'm also not your mother tonight." She kept her eyes on the windshield. "Go."

The kitchen light was on.

My mother had left a note on the table, in her round handwriting, that said Gone to bed. Ice in the freezer. Be good.

I read it twice and put it face down.

Erin filled a clean dish towel with ice and wrung the neck of it in her fist.

"Sit," she said.

"I can do it."

"Alec. Sit down."

I sat in the kitchen chair, and she stood in front of me with the towel.

She had stopped at three feet, and then she looked at me, and took one step more.

Her knees were almost touching mine.

"Hold still," she said.

She laid the ice on my mouth.

It hurt, and I hissed, and her other hand came up and cupped my jaw to keep my head steady.

It was the first time she had touched my face since she remembered who I was.

Her palm was warm.

"You didn't duck," she said.

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