Graham’s reply came in under thirty seconds.
What did she say about Rose?
Too much for text.Can you come over?
His response was immediate.
Fifteen minutes.
* * *
He arrived in twelve.
Maren heard the truck pull into the driveway and opened the front door before he knocked.He was wearing the same clothes from the tailgate—dark jeans, a gray Henley with the sleeves pushed to his elbows.His eyes moved past her into the house, a scan so fast and automatic that she would have missed it if she hadn’t been looking for it.
“Coffee?”she asked.
“Please.”
She stepped aside and he walked in.
She made the coffee while he stood by the counter.Not sitting, not leaning, just present.
She handed him a mug and sat down at the dining table.He pulled out the chair across from her and sat.
“Tell me.”
She told him.Everything Peg had said.Rose coming to her at eleven thirty, shaking.The request to back her up.The twenty-four hours that Peg had asked for, and Rose never got.The cleaned-out locker.The resignation that came from nowhere and left no trace.
Graham listened without interrupting.He held his coffee with both hands and watched her face with steady attention—no fidgeting, no glancing at the clock.He heard her the way she’d heard patients tell her difficult things—completely, without planning his response while she was still talking.
When she finished, he set down the mug.
“Peg told you she should have said yes when Rose asked.”
“She did.”
“That took something.For a woman nineteen months from retirement to make that call.”
“Rose has been gone for four years.”
He nodded once, absorbing that.“Do you think Rose left voluntarily?”
“I think Rose did what she had to do to survive.Whether that was leaving on her own or being made to leave, the result is the same.She’s gone, and the people who wanted her gone are still running the night shift.”
“I need to find her.”
“Her nursing license number is in the notebook.Page eleven.”
“Where’s the notebook?”
“In the planter on the back porch.If anyone would check it, they’d leave dirt everywhere.”
Something moved across his face.Not a smile—a softening around his eyes that lasted half a second before he put it away.
“That’s a good hiding place.”
“I’m resourceful.”
