"I had a headache," he said. "A real bad one. And I threw up. And then I didn't feel cold anymore. And Milo was on me, and he kept biting my ear. Not hard. He kept biting it and biting it and then he went away and I heard him yelling downstairs." Kevin touched his ear, which had a tiny red mark on the rim. "And then I don't remember."
Del got up and walked out of the room.
* * *
She found him at the end of the corridor, by the window that looked out over the parking lot, standing with his hands flat against the cold glass. The sun was coming up over the roofs of Xenia, red and enormous in the frozen air. Every car in the lot was furred with frost.
"I nailed it shut," he said, without turning around. "Jan. I nailed it shut on him."
"You didn't know."
"I knew." He turned around, and his long plain face was wet. She had never in eleven years seen Del Pruitt cry, not even in Dr. Hanley's office in 1979, when they'd been told, kindly and finally, that there wasn't going to be a baby. "Some part of me knew. When the heater went missing. When your Ding Dongs went. When I found a Reds baseball card on the floor of the garage last Saturday, a Dave Parker, and I knew it wasn't mine, Jan, I knew whose it was, I used to put them in the Doyles' mailbox for him. And I picked it up and put it in my pocket and didn't say anything." He took it out of his shirt pocket; he'd been carrying it all week. Dave Parker, Cincinnati Reds, 1985, the corner bent. "I told myself I was imagining things. I told myself if I was right I'd have to call the county and they'd come and take him back, and if I was wrong you'd think I'd lost my mind. I didn't want to be the one—" His voice broke. "And I nailed a board over the hole. Because it was easier than going up and looking."
She went to him. She put her arms around his waist and her face against his chest, the softball jacket smelling of cold and kerosene, and she held on.
"You went up," she said into his shirt. "When it mattered, you went up. You went up that hole in your bare feet like you were nineteen."
"I thought I was going to have a heart attack."
"I know. I thought so too."
"I lie awake," he said into her hair, very quietly. "That's the other thing. That's why I don't sleep. I'm forty-one. My dad was fifty-two. I lie there and I count. Eleven years. And I think about you in that house by yourself, and I can't—" He stopped. "I didn't want to say. You've got enough. You come home from that floor and you've got nothing left, and I didn't want to put mine on top of it."
"Del." She pulled back far enough to look at him. "You idiot. That's what I'm for. That's the whole job. That's room and board."
He laughed, wetly, startled, and she felt it go all the way through him.
They stood there at the window a long time, in the red light, holding each other up. Eventually Janet became aware of someone standing a polite distance away, and she turned her head and saw Mrs. Odom, with her glasses on their beaded chain, holding a manila folder against her chest.
"Mr. and Mrs. Pruitt," she said. "I just got off the phone with Mr. Doyle in Knoxville."