“Oh, I’ll get it.” Chick leaned forward like he was going to stand up. Tess said very funny and Leo followed her inside. He smelled coffee. There was a hospital bed set up on the knit rug between the couch and the fireplace. On the picnic table in the kitchen were two egg-yolk-streaked plates, a half-eaten piece of toast on one of them. Allie’s door was open, but he didn’t see her in there.

Mrs. Donovan switched on the faucet in the sink, then left the water running and turned around to face him. She folded her arms beneath her small breasts. “I heard what you said out there. May I ask what you need to talk to him about?”

Leo slid his hands into his pants pockets, his right fingers stopping at the cash. “He doesn’t know anything, does he?”

“Do you know how hurt that man is?”

Little Christopher laughed out in the backyard. Leo could see him through the rear window chasing after a bright red ball Allie had just kicked him. Her back was to the cabin. The sun made her hair shine, and her T-shirt hung down past her cut-offs. Her legs were tanned and skinny as ever. “Can you ask her to come in here a minute?”

“You have to get back to the porch.”

Leo pulled out the cash. “I have six hundred dollars.”

She looked down at the money as if it were a small animal Leo had just killed to give her. She glanced back towards the front of the house, then she looked back down at his hand, her face changed. “It cost half that.”

Leo stepped forward and put all the money on the counter next to here. He looked right into her face, into her eyes that were nothing like Allie’s, were deep and dark and unblinking. He turned and headed back out to the porch, the water still running.

“Get it down okay?” Chick said.

“Yep.” Leo picked up his stool and set it in front of Chick’s good leg, the one that was bent and allowed Leo room to get close enough. He took the bowl from the tray and held it so Chick could splash his face with his cupped left hand. Some water dripped on the gauze around his chest and turned it gray.

“What’d you want to tell me?”

“I shingled the roof of the job Thursday.”

“You’re pulling my cast.”

“Nope.” Leo squirted Old Spice foam into his palm and started to lather Chick’s bruised throat.

“Have you done that before?”

“Not every morning. Four or five times a week, though.”

“You’re a funny one. I meant roofing.”