Chapter 24: Early Enough

"Early," Conall said, from one knee in the snow. "I swear."

Tobin looked at him a moment longer.

Then he turned and walked back to Otis, and that was the whole conversation.

On Friday the Cutbank Elementary gym smelled like floor wax and wet mittens.

The doors opened at five-thirty for a six o'clock concert.

Conall had been standing outside them since a quarter to four.

I know because I felt him.

I felt him through the bond all afternoon, a steady, nervous warmth that moved from the truck to the gym doors and back again.

At four, he'd texted me a picture of the empty hallway.

I'm first, it said.

You're insane, I wrote back.

At four-ten he sent another one.

Still first.

I put the phone down on Otis's kitchen counter, where Otis was ironing a shirt with great suspicion.

"He sent you a picture of a hallway," Otis said.

"He's counting."

"He's going to wear a groove in the floor."

"Let him."

Otis snorted and handed me the shirt.

It was Tobin's, the white one with the collar, the one that was a size too small.

I took both boys to the school at five.

Tobin was in the second row of the choir, in a paper hat.

Emmett, who had been told he could be in the back row because he was new, had flatly refused and stood in the front, grinning.

His color was good.

He'd put on three pounds, the vet said, in the first month without the tea.

I pinned the boys' names on their shirts and kissed both foreheads, and the teacher shooed me out.

I went around to the front of the gym.

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