Page 10 of Death on Gallows Path

After hearing about his travel day, I asked, “Do events like this remind you about your bad eye limiting your law enforcement opportunities?”

“Where’d that come from? You’ve rarely asked about my sight.”

He could have said that a hundred different ways, including accusatory. He was openly curious.

“I’ve wondered, but . . .”

He waited. Letting me find my words. Making me find my words.

“It didn’t seem fair to ask about your past when I wasn’t telling you such a big chunk of mine.”

“I like that about you — your sense of fairness.”

I eyed the screen. My suspicion faded. He meant it. Just like the curiosity.

He also was teasing me. But that was okay.

“I told you a lot about growing up and my family — a lot more than you’ve told me about yours.”

“You left out fifteen years, when you were world-famous,” he said dryly.

“Because I was pretending to be Kit — well, not pretending to be her, but pretending I did what she actually did. As I told you before, it wasn’t my secret—”

“Which Kit told you to tell me long before you did.”

I should have kept my mouth shut about that. Sharing the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth can be dangerous.

Of course, we all know people, including public figures, who stay so far from that danger that they land in a quagmire that coats them in a stink they can never outrun. No question, I prefer the dangers of telling the truth.

Didn’t mean I wouldn’t change the subject.

“—besides, I wouldn’t say world-famous.” I sucked in a breath. “But none of this is the point. I have told you about those fifteen years, so—”

“Which I already knew.”

“—it’s fair for me to ask questions — unless you’re going to keep things hidden from me.”

His eyes glinted at the challenge. “Ask.”

I had two vital questions I wanted to get to, but didn’t want to start with.

“Did you know right away that you’d lost sight in your eye?”

“Pretty much from the start doctors said I’d lost most of the sight in that eye.”

“How did—?”

He cut off the beginning of one of my vital questions.

“There was an incident.” The term he’d used the few times we’d ventured into the topic.

Push? Or retreat?

I retreated.

Possibly because he cut me off. Partly from cowardice. Toss in uncertainty of how to continue on that front.

There were, however, other fronts.