Chapter 5: The Front Page

I got as far as the corner of Putnam and Third before my hands stopped working.

I pulled the Corolla over by the mailbox and sat with the engine running.

I was not crying.

I was doing the thing where you breathe in for four and out for six.

A truck pulled up alongside me and stopped.

It was a dark green Ford with a fire department sticker in the back window.

Tom Muller rolled down his window.

"Hey," he said. "I wasn't following you. I came to return something."

He held up a spatula.

It was my mother's good one, with the wooden handle burned black at the end.

She had left it on the Armory griddle on Saturday.

I laughed, and the laugh broke in the middle.

"I'll give it back to her," I said.

"Sure." He put it on the dash. "Hallie, do you want a ride, or do you want to keep driving?"

He didn't ask what was wrong.

He didn't say he was sorry or that it would all work out.

"Keep driving," I said.

I locked the Corolla and climbed into his truck.

It smelled like sawdust and coffee and a little like smoke.

A library book about wood joinery lay on the seat.

"You check out that book from me," I said.

"Three times. I keep renewing it." He pulled away from the curb. "I like the pictures."

We drove the river road for twenty minutes without saying anything.

The Ohio was the color of a nickel under the streetlights, and the barge lights went by slow as candles.

At some point he handed me a sleeve of saltines from the door pocket, and I ate four of them without noticing.

"My mother knew," I said finally.