Ancil did not say anything.
"Because if she didn't," Nolan said, "you were going to keep these. That right?"
"I don't know what I was going to do."
"That's what everybody says." Nolan said it quietly. "Every one. I've heard it from schoolteachers and preachers and a man who was on the county council. I don't know what I was going to do. I was just holding them for a while. I was going to get rid of them. And then the grandson comes over to visit and goes in the bathroom." He held the vial up between them, at the level of Ancil's eyes. "Nineteen oxycodone tens, in a man's coat pocket, walking past a disposal box. You know what nineteen of these are worth on the street in Gentry County right now? Thirty dollars apiece, if they're real. Five hundred and seventy dollars. I'm not saying that's what you were doing. I'm saying that's what it looks like, standing here. I'm saying if Ricketts had stopped you on 135 with this in your pocket, you'd be talking to him about it right now in the back of his car."
"Nolan," Mattie said. "That is a legally prescribed medication for a member of his household, and he is transporting it to a disposal site, which is exactly what the DEA tells people to do. That's what it's for. You put the sign up yourself."
"I know what I put up, Mattie."
"Then give it back to him."
Nolan did not give it back. He held it. He looked at Ancil, and at the brown coat, and at the flap of the flannel shirt pocket over Ancil's heart where something rectangular pressed against the cloth.
"What else have you got?"