"That's because I'm a nurse, Mom."
She handed me the last plate. I dried it and put it away. She folded the dish towel on the counter and looked at me with the look she had—the one that started at my hair and ended at my hands, the quick inventory she didn't know she was running.
"You'd tell me," she said. "If there was someone."
"There's no one, Mom."
"But you'd tell me."
"I'd tell you."
She nodded and kissed me on the side of the head, slightly too hard, and went to get her knitting from the living room.
I stood at the counter with my hands on the dish towel and felt the place at the side of my neck under my ear where the mark was almost gone now, a faint yellow shadow under my jaw that my mother had not noticed.
CHAPTER 4
Duke
The coffee had been on the burner since the night shift signed off, and it tasted like it always tasted—burned, bitter, and nobody's problem to fix. I poured a cup and drank it standing at the kitchen island.
Halsey had eggs on. He came down from the dorm at five every shift, and by six-thirty, the foil tray was on the burner, the home fries were on the back element, and the paper plates were stacked on the island in a tower that would be gone by seven. The kitchen smelled like diesel, grease, and the floor wax they laid on Sundays, and the fluorescent over the island hummed at a frequency I stopped hearing sometime around my second year on the job.
I was at the bumper of the rig doing the engine compartment check. Easton did his own every morning, whether somebody else had already done it or not—things were either on the rig, or they weren't, and Easton Ford didn't take another man's word for it. But Easton was on his honeymoon for another four days, and the rig still needed checking, so I was the one crouched at the compartment with the inventory sheet, counting what was there and confirming what was already confirmed.
Lou came through the bay with his clipboard at his hip. He didn't look up. "Rhodes."
"Lou."
"Halsey's got eggs."
"Halsey always has eggs. I don't think Halsey knows how not to have eggs."
Lou kept walking. He took the coffee off the burner without looking at it, poured a cup, set the pot back, and disappeared into the office. That was Lou. Six-three, gray at the temples, never raised his voice because he never needed to.
Micah was at the island when I came in. Twenty-three years old, the youngest on the crew, sitting on his stool with a plate of eggs and a look on his face that meant he was about to say something nobody had asked for.
"Rhodes."
"Micah."
"Is it true Easton cried during his vows?"
"Easton got through two lines and stopped."
"Stopped like he forgot them?"
"Stopped like he meant every word, and his throat wouldn't let the rest of them through."
Micah was quiet for a second. "Respect."
"Eat your eggs, Micah."
"I'm eating my eggs."
Halsey came past with the foil tray. He gave Micah a look. Micah ate his eggs.
I took a plate and sat at the island. The coffee was still hot.
