Page 26 of Shatter

The last clear memory I have is the weight of it around my shoulders, heavy and warm, and the smell of him in the lining.

And a voice.

Gravel and smoke, standing over the couch.

That's your cut on her.

A claim, boy.

A claim.

My chest goes cold, a spreading cold starting under my breastbone and seeping outward into my arms, until my fingertips tingle inside the gauze.

On the docks, when I was twelve, I heard two of my father's longshoremen talking about a woman at the bar across the street from the terminal.

She's got his patch on her back, one of them said.

She's his.

Like a truck is his.

Like a dog.

My father pulled me into his office and shut the door, and when I asked what it meant, he told me it was nothing a Carrow ever needed to know.

"What does it mean?" I don't look away from the leather. "A claim."

Vail follows my gaze to the dresser.

She doesn't answer for so long the fan ticks around four more times.

"That's a conversation for you and Hakon." She sets the paperback on her knee and looks at me. "Not me."

It isn't an answer.

It's worse than an answer.

My fingers curl into the blanket until the gauze bites into my palms.

* * *

He comes in a little after four.

I hear him before I see him, boots in the hall, slower than they were last night, and a soft knock on the door.

He knocks.

On his own door.

"Come in." Vail doesn't look up from her book.

He opens it slowly and stops on the threshold.

He's showered.

His dark hair is wet and pushed back off his forehead, and his feet are bare under his jeans.

His knuckles are red and swollen on his right hand.