Page 35 of The First Gentleman

I hear the drum pounding from the corner. The fiddle answers.

“Lillian!” a waitress calls.

“I gotta go,” she says.

“Can we talk again?” I ask.

“Give me your number. I’ll call you.”

I get the feeling she’s been wanting somebody to talk to for a long time. I scrawl my digits on a napkin and hand it to her. She tucks it into her jeans pocket.

I take her arm and squeeze it lightly. “I need you. Suzanne needs you.”

She’s sniffling now. She says, her voice shaky, “After all this time, I do want justice.” She wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. The fiddle music is rising in pitch and urgency. She leans close and whispers in my ear, “That night after the Steelers game?” she says. “That’s when I learned the truth about Cole Wright.”

CHAPTER

28

Litchfield, Connecticut

Between brutal traffic on the Mass Pike and a slowdown on every back road in Connecticut, what should have been a three-hour drive is closer to four and a half. I text Garrett a few times from the road, letting him know my ETA. All I get back isK.

The little farmhouse we’re renting is outside of Litchfield on five acres not far from the Topsmead State Forest. It’s an hour drive to the Yale campus, but Garrett felt this need to be isolated from the world, so here we are.

As I turn into our winding driveway—more like a dirt road, really—I can see lights on in the living room. There’s a strange car parked by the barn. Oh, right. Garrett’s rental.

He’s home!

I park the Subaru out front and hurry inside. “Garrett? You here?”

I see a hand wave from the top of the sofa. I walk around and put down my bag.

And then I freeze.

Garrett’s lying under a thin blanket. The right side of his face is bruised and swollen. His forehead is scraped. Bloody washcloths are piled on the wood floor.

I drop to my knees and put my hand on his shoulder. My heart is pounding. “Garrett! What happened? Can you talk?”

“I can talk,” he says. “But my jaw hurts.”

“Jesus! Were you in an accident?”

“Yeah,” he mumbles. “My face collided with Tony Romero’s fist.”

I grit my teeth. “That mother—Did you call the police?”

Garrett shakes his head. I run my hand down his side. He flinches in pain. His ribs! I move the blanket and pull up his shirt. His whole torso is purple.

“You need to get to a hospital. I’m calling 911.” I pull my phone from my bag. Garrett grabs it out of my hand.

“No!” he says. “I’ll be fine.”

“You could have internal bleeding!”

“If I start spitting up blood, I’ll go. I drove home like this. Leave it.”

“Don’t move,” I tell him. I grab a roll of paper towels from the kitchen and a bottle of isopropyl alcohol from the bathroom. “You think anything’s broken?” I ask.

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