# THOMPSON-HAYES: THE INSIDE OUT
## Chapter Twenty-Seven — Cole Before the Hearing
Cole asked to walk with her on a Sunday afternoon.
No agenda. She knew by now that when Cole Mercer asked to walk without an agenda there was an agenda, but it was the kind of agenda that needed movement to arrive at rather than a table. He had learned this about himself, she thought, somewhere in the years of careful solitary building — that some things needed to be said sideways, in motion, without the formality of eye contact.
They walked the neighborhood. The May afternoon was warm and specific — not Austin's August heat, the honest warmth of a season doing what it should do. The gardenias on the street she had found in March were blooming now, fully, the impossible plants having found their right co
