Page 65

“I did.”

“With your tractor—into the ravine—and you covered it up.”

“I did. It sat in my barn under a tarp for a few days first, while I bought a chain and worked up the nerve.”

“And then you told everybody she ran away.”

Hank looks down at his tea. “I did that too.”

Lindsey’s hand is crushing mine under the table.

“Why? You’ve known me since I was born. And you let me think for seventeen years that she left me. That I drove her off.”

Hank closes his eyes, and his mouth compresses until it’s bloodless.

“I know, Lindsey,” he says in a quiet voice. “There hasn’t been a Friday I didn’t think about it.”

“Then why?”

He opens his eyes.

“Because I made her a promise,” he rasps. “In this kitchen at two o’clock in the morning, with June sitting right where you’re sitting. I put my hand on my badge and promised that girl I would never tell a soul. Not her mother or you or anybody.”

With a rough swallow, Hank sets down his mug. “I can’t break that promise, Lindsey. Not without her say-so. It’s the only thing I ever had to give her.”

“Hank,” I say as Lindsey squeezes my hand. “Gabe ran Brett Kessler. He’s dead. Motorcycle wreck outside Elko, Nevada. March of 2015.”

Hank looks at me like I said it in another language. Lindsey nods at him.

“2015,” he whispers roughly.

“Gabe pulled the report,” Lindsey says, her tone gentle. “It’s him, Hank. He’s been gone eleven years.”

Hank’s fingers curl into knots around his mug. “I lost track of him when he left Utah. I called around a while. Then I retired, and I didn’t have a badge to call with.”

His voice thins out. “Danielle asks me every year. Every year I write back that I can’t be sure. I can’t be sure, dear, stay where you are.”

We watch as Hank presses his knuckles against his mouth. “Eleven of those letters, he was already in the ground.”

Lindsey doesn’t reach for him. Not yet. She’s looking at the June mug on the shelf, and when she talks, her voice is quiet and even.

“I’m glad she’s safe, Hank. I am. But I was seventeen, and I thought I did something so bad my best friend had to run away from me. I believed that every day for seventeen years. And you watched me believe it.”

Hank doesn’t argue. He doesn’t bring up the promise again. He just nods, slowly, and keeps his eyes on hers.

“I did,” he says. “I let you. I’m sorry, Lindsey.”

“I’m going to be mad about that for a while.”

“You should be.”

Lindsey reaches across the table and puts her hand over his. But suddenly she sits up straight.

“Her say-so,” she repeats.

Hank doesn’t answer that. He doesn’t have to. Lindsey gets it all at once. It moves across her face like sunrise.

“You can ask her,” she says. “You know where she is. You can ask her.”