Chapter 7: Day Four

Griffin didn't answer his mother.

He looked at her for a long moment, then at the folded paper in her handbag.

Then he looked at me.

"Get your shoes," he said.

"Griffin," Bernadette said. "Be sensible."

"I'm being sensible, Mom. Rhett, go home with Grandma. Eat something."

Rhett looked at me.

"Go," I said. "I'll be home before you wake up. I promise."

He pulled his headphones up and went.

Bernadette's hand lay heavy on his shoulder, and her eyes stayed on me until the door closed.

It was the first time in sixteen years I had seen my husband walk away from his mother.

He didn't talk during the drive to Pell Street.

He gripped the wheel at ten and two, and he took every yellow light as if it were a red.

Number 418 was dark except for a lamp in the front window.

Shanna opened the door before we knocked.

She wore a pink robe with her hair down.

She looked like a woman who had not been to bed and did not intend to.

"Mr. Hartsell," she said. "I want you to know I am recording this."

She held up her phone.

"Good," Griffin said. "I want a record too."

He held out the lab report.

The team doctor had printed a second copy while Bernadette wasn't looking.

"Everett isn't ours," he said. "Not by blood."

"Alana and I are going to know what happened that night, Shanna. I'd like to hear it from you."

Shanna didn't take the paper.

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