"And I'm keeping the phone."
He blinked. "The—"
"The second phone. It's mine now. You don't get to have a phone I don't know about. Not for a while. Maybe not ever. I'm not going to check your other one. I don't want to be that. But that one's mine."
He nodded slowly. The light over the woods was turning grey, then pale gold at the very edge. Somewhere a rooster, improbably, went off, and then thought better of it.
"I'll go," he said. "I'll call Danny from the road." He hesitated. "Can I say goodbye to Tanner?"
"When he wakes up," Kristen said. "Tell him you have to go to work. Don't make it bigger than it is for him."
"Okay." He took the afghan off his shoulders and folded it, badly, into a lumpy square. "Kris? I'm sorry I scared you. In the locker room. Of all of it, that's the one I keep seeing."
"Good," she said. "Keep seeing it."
She meant it, and she watched him take it, and he did not argue.
At seven-fifteen she pulled into the lot at Cedar Hollow, a long low brick building that had once been a Catholic retreat house, with a statue of some saint in the courtyard who'd lost a hand to weather. Shelby had borrowed a pair of Jolene's sneakers, a size too big, and a clean sweatshirt. She had said goodbye to Tanner at the kitchen table over toaster waffles, and he had asked if her back was better, and she had looked at Kristen and then back at him and said, "Not yet, bug. It's not my back. I'll tell you about it when I'm home. I promise I'll tell you the real thing." He'd considered that and said, "Okay," and then asked if he could have the last waffle.
In the car, Shelby sat for a minute with her hand on the door handle.
"Will you come to the family session?" she said. "Sunday. It's at two. They do it on the computer for people who are far, but you can come in person. Brock was going to come. It was supposed to be Brock."
"I'll come," Kristen said.