"Cole. Good to see you. Under better circumstances, of course."
Cole's jaw sets. "Sheriff."
They shake hands.
I watch it happen in slow motion. Calloway's hand closesaround Cole's, fingers digging in — not enough for anyone at a distance to catch, but enough that I see the tendons flex in his forearm. His grip is a vise, and he holds it, and his eyes lock onto Cole's hard enough to lift the hair on my arms.
But Cole was trained in not flinching, trained by the best. He lets his hand be crushed and keeps his face smooth.
"Real shame about your stepfather," Calloway says, his voice still pleasant, still right for a funeral. "Such a loss. But I'm sure you'll find ways to keep busy. Town like this, there's always something needs looking into."
The subtext is so thick you could spread it on toast. Cole's knuckles are white, but his face doesn't change. He holds the stare without blinking, without backing down, and for a long moment they're locked in a contest of wills.
"Thanks for coming," Cole says finally, flat. "Means a lot."
Calloway lets go. A red mark fades from Cole's fingers. "Any time, son. That's what I'm here for."
He nods to Eileen, to me, and walks back to the cruiser, footsteps unhurried, back straight. The engine starts. The cruiser pulls away, slow and deliberate, and disappears down the cemetery road toward town.
Nobody speaks. The lot feels colder than it did five minutes ago.
Driving back to Cembrook Road, Eileen falls asleep against the window, her breath shallow and wheezing. Cole drives with both hands on the wheel, knuckles pale, and the silence between us has a new dimension — charged, edged, something that smells like danger.
Back at the house, Eileen is done. The funeral tookeverything she had and then some. Cole settles her into her armchair like a man handling something irreplaceable, and then he's on his knees beside her, working the tank — checking the gauge, adjusting the flow, fitting the mask over her nose and mouth with hands that know exactly what they're doing.
"She needs rest," he says, not looking at me. "The service wiped her out."
"I can see that."
He stands. Eileen's eyes are closed behind the mask, her chest rising and falling in the shallow, effortful rhythm of lungs turning to stone one cell at a time. The oxygen sighs softly, a sound like distant waves.
"I'll make dinner," Cole says.
"I'll help."
"You don't have to."
"I know."
He looks at me then, really looks, and for a second I think he might say something — might drop the act, let some piece of the unsaid slip through whatever wall he's built between us. The moment passes. His eyes flatten, and he turns toward the kitchen.
I stand in the doorway and watch Eileen breathe, and the guilt settles deeper, finds new pockets to nest in. Wade is in the ground. The paperwork is tomorrow. The plan was clean. Simple. No complications.
But nothing about this house is simple. Not the way Cole moves through these rooms, tending his dying mother with hands that could break a man's jaw. Not the look on Calloway's face when he crushed Cole's hand and called him son.
The afternoon light slants through the living room windows, yellow and thin, and the house holds its breath around us. In the kitchen, a pan clatters onto a burner. Water runs. Normal sounds. A life continuing despite everything.
Chapter Three
Trevor
The oxygen tubing has slipped from her nose again. I notice it the way you notice anything in a room you've sat in too long — the water glass on the nightstand needs refilling, the curtain hangs slack in the July heat, and the clear plastic cannula has worked loose from Eileen's left nostril, dangling beside her cheek like a pale worm while she dozes in the armchair.
The concentrator hums on the floor beside her, pushing its steady breath through twenty feet of tubing that snakes across the carpet. Low, constant, the kind of white noise you stop hearing until it changes. I've been in here ten minutes with a magazine I found on the dresser — something about gardening, which is funny given the state of the side yard — and I didn't catch the loose tubing until her breathing shifted, going from the ragged but rhythmic pull of assisted oxygen to something thinner, more desperate.
I set the magazine down and crouch beside the chair.Her face is turned toward the window, eyes closed, the skin around her mouth slack. Up close, the damage is worse than it was two days ago, or maybe I'm just seeing it clearer now that the funeral's over and there's nothing to look at but the truth. Her collarbones are sharp under the thin cotton of her nightgown. The veins in her temples stand blue against paper-white skin.
I reach for the cannula. My fingers are careful, which is not a quality I associate with my hands. These are the hands that held an M4 in Iraq, that put a tourniquet on a corporal's leg while rounds snapped past my helmet. Now they're adjusting plastic tubing with the delicacy of a bomb tech, and the disconnect would be funny if it weren't so sad.
