The hand on my shoulder wasn't rough. That was the thing that told me.
Nineteen years I'd been handled by men who owed me nothing, and I'd learned the grammar of it — the grab means you're a problem, the shove means you're a message, and the hand that settles on you gentle as a father's means you're already finished and they're just keeping you upright for the photograph. Garrett Roe's hand was gentle. And he wasn't looking at me. He was looking across Santa Fe Avenue at a white truck I'd know anywhere because I'd helped her buy it, cosigned with the only credit I had left in 2019, and I'd been proud of that for about four hours before I lost the rest of it at a table.
Lark.
