Chapter 31: The Question I Asked Wrong
I did not confront Ronan that day, or the next.
I told myself I was being careful. The truth was smaller and uglier than that: I was afraid of the answer, and afraid of my own face when I asked. So I carried the folded page in my pocket for four days, until it had gone soft at the creases, and I watched him the way you watch a bridge you're no longer sure will hold your weight.
He noticed. Of course he noticed. He'd spent his whole life reading rooms for danger.
"You've stopped looking at me," he said, on the fifth evening, in the yard behind the stables. "You look at my hands. My boots. The middle distance. Not my face."
"I'm tired."
"You're lying." He said it without heat, just tired and flat. "What did I do?"
I could have shown him the page
