“I was told not to.”
She closed the spice rack.“It’s there because that’s where it fits.”
“It fits between the nutmeg and the paprika.”
“Graham.”
“I’m only saying.”
“Don’t move the oregano.”
“I won’t.”
“Or the bay leaves.”
“Where are the bay leaves?”
“Exactly.”
They drove through Blossom Springs at five-forty in the morning.The fountain in Main Square was running but the awning at Mae’s was still rolled up.The traffic light at First Street was blinking yellow.A man in a fluorescent vest was watering the planters outside the courthouse, the hose curled around his ankles like a sleeping snake.
Graham drove.Maren drank her coffee.Neither of them said much.
At the hospital lot, he parked in the visitor row — the row he’d parked in three weeks ago when he’d still been a volunteer with a clipboard.He turned off the engine.The dashboard clock read 5:46.
“Fourteen minutes,” he said.
“Mm.”
“You good?”
She turned to him.“I’m good.”
“You call me if anything is off.”
“Graham.The man who arrested Janet Creighton is going to be at his desk in the federal building today.The woman who ran her shadow log from the credit union account was picked up yesterday.Sattler is in custody.The hospital is the safest it’s been in eighteen months.”
“I know.”
“Call me anyway.”
“If you want.”
“I want.”
She leaned across the cab and kissed him — quick, firm, the kiss of a woman leaving for work, not the kiss of a woman leaving for a mission.It was the kind of kiss two people who lived together gave each other in a hospital parking lot before a shift.He had never been on the receiving end of one before.
“See you at six,” she said.
“Six.”
She got out and walked across the lot toward the front doors with her bag on her shoulder and her badge swinging on the lanyard.He watched her badge through the entrance, watched her cross the lobby, watched her get on the elevator.
Then he sat in the truck for another minute.
Three weeks ago, he’d sat in this same lot at midnight, not as a man dropping a woman off but as a man who couldn’t bear the distance between himself and a building.Now he had the key to her front door on his ring beside his own.Half her closet was clear for him.He was not allowed to move the oregano.The differences were small enough that he could have missed them if he hadn’t spent three weeks counting Mississippis on the wrong side of a wall.
He started the truck and drove east toward Lake Road.
