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This was what he said instead of hello.
“Finn?” I said.
“Finn,” he said.
“I’m five minutes away.”
“Congratulations,” he said.
Then he hung up.
The Starkville City Jail
I didn’t have much choice here,” Ethan said, leading me down the hall toward the small jail cell where Finn had spent the night drying out, Ethan not officially booking him, but not letting him roam the streets either.
“These last couple of months, it’s been a lot. Disorderly conduct, drunk driving, sleeping in his car.”
“Seriously? That isn’t a crime.”
Ethan nodded. “It is here,” he said.
I didn’t like thinking of what it had been like for Finn since Margaret had told him how she felt about him, Margaret both closer to him than ever, and further away, Bobby unavailable for consolation. It just about broke my heart to picture him sitting in jail, Ethan Tropper the only one who was available to talk to him.
“Last night was the last straw, especially after the fire hydrant incident.”
“What did you just say?”
“The fire hydrant incident. Finn rammed his truck into a fire hydrant. Finn destroyed public property.”
“What makes you think it was him?”
“I don’t think. I know. I was able to decipher the marks left on the fire hydrant and match them to the chipped paint on Finn’s truck.”
Tropper looked amazingly proud of himself for this great detective work, or for rehashing what he had seen on CSI: Miami.
I raised my hand, unwilling to let my brother take the hit, at least for that. “That’s on me, Ethan. I was driving the truck.”
Tropper cocked his head. “That was you? You hit and ran?”
Then Ethan reached in his pocket, and for a second, I thought he was going to take out his handcuffs. He took out a key instead.
Ethan opened the jail cell door, a tiny room with a toilet and a mattress and a pine tree air freshener.
Finn rose up from the twin mattress, Ethan jokingly knocking on the jailhouse bars.
“You decent?” Ethan said.
“Decent enough,” Finn said, smiling. He was slightly disheveled, but I’d never have guessed that he’d spent the night in jail if that hadn’t been where he was standing. Smelling of trees.
Ethan walked out of the cell, locking the door behind himself, the click deafening. “Give me a few minutes to sneak you past Sheriff Elliot. And summon your sister here for her hit-and-run altercation from the other night.”
I drilled Ethan with a look. “It was a fire hydrant, Ethan, not a person.”
Ethan got in my face. “What it is, my lady, is unacceptable.”
Then Finn stepped forward, putting his hand on Ethan’s shoulder. “Let’s just calm down here, okay? You need to ignore her. She wasn’t even in the truck. She’s just trying to help me out.”
“Is that true?”
