Page 85 of Never Alone
"Bothering you?"
"Yeah."
He hadn't looked back at me. He was still standing at the sink with his hands resting on the rim, looking at the spot where the dishwater was draining out. I turned to face him, the towel still in my hand.
"Tell me."
He told me. There was a woman who had come into Sean's the morning he'd taken Noah to the visitation—the trip to Sean's I'd made him a tray of pastries for. Mid-twenties. Dark-haired. A heavy coat. She'd asked him for help with a leak under her sink. The pretext had been thin enough that he'd clocked it on the spot. She'd stood too close to him in the aisle. She'd touched his forearm on the way out.
"That was the first time."
"There've been others?"
"Two more. Different places. A couple of days after Sean's, she showed up at the firehouse—said she lived in the neighborhood and wanted to drop off cookies for the crew."
"Cookies?"
"Yeah."
"What was the third?"
"Last Wednesday. Davis and I were out shopping for the house, picking up groceries for the week's meals. She was in the dairy aisle. Made a thing about not believing how small the town was."
He paused and looked at me directly for the first time since the conversation had started.
"Do you think he'd hire somebody to?—"
He hesitated. Looked for the word. The word he found was small in his mouth.
"—to try to seduce me."
The laugh came up out of me before I could stop it.
He waited.
"I'm sorry. I am—I'm not laughing at the question. I'm laughing at the word in your mouth."
"It was the word that fit."
"I know it was."
"Tessa."
I made myself stop smiling. "I wouldn't put it past him. He'd think it was clever. He'd think we deserved it."
He nodded. He didn't smile back. He went back to looking at the sink, thinking about something. After a beat, he looked over at me again.
"Would you come with me?"
"Where?"
"Sean's. Tomorrow."
I almost smiled again, for a different reason this time.
The man was a mountain. He'd carried Noah out of a burning building over one shoulder. He'd stood in our living room with a court official three days ago and answered every question with the steady plainness of someone who had decided who he was a long time ago. And here he was at the kitchen sink, asking me—quietly, almost embarrassed—to come with him to the hardware store, because a girl in a heavy coat had thrown his sense of where the floor was.
But it was more than that.
