He’d left space between us—enough that I could breathe and enough that not a single muscle in my neck tightened at the question.

Asking the librarian to give us copies of police reports. I wasn’t about to offer up that explanation, so instead, I held out the book.

Bales raised an eyebrow. “And the supply store?” he asked. I must have looked surprised, because he elaborated. “Small town.”

“Cady never said we couldn’t explore.”

The edges of the old man’s lips curved ever so slightly. “Did I say you couldn’t?”

He hadn’t. Nothing he’d said to me so far had sounded even remotely like an order.

“If you take after my daughter as much as I think you do, I’d be a fool to try to tell you what you can and cannot do.”

If anyone else had said those words, I would have sat there in silence, but I could see Cady in her father as easily as he could see her in me.

“Are you?” I asked him. “A fool?”

Bales chuckled and studied the backs of his hands, the skin worn by age and exposure. “I can be, when it’s worth the cost.”

I wasn’t quite sure how to respond to that.

“What you overheard, with Gabriel—it’s nothing you need to concern yourself with.” Bales managed to sound like he hadn’t just changed the subject. “And it’s not something he’d thank you for overhearing.”

I know. I didn’t say that out loud. Instead, I opted for a different truth. “Jude, Free, and I ran into the sheriff at the supply store.” I addressed the words to the back of my hands. “He said some things. About Gabriel.”

The silence Bales offered in return didn’t feel pointed. It felt like breathing room.

“The sheriff,” I continued after a long pause, “told me to ask you about how you and Gabriel met.”

If that statement took Bales off guard, he gave no sign of it that I could see. “That a question?” he asked.

Was it?

The night before, Gabriel had said that he wasn’t the trustworthy type. But today, he’d knelt next to me in the cave. He hadn’t tried to pry the radio from my hand. He’d fed me the words to say, until I could speak on my own.

“No,” I found myself telling Bales. “That wasn’t a question.”

I wanted answers, but not from him.

“I would have liked to have known you,” Bales commented, his eyes fixed on the horizon. “When you were young.”

As seconds stretched into minutes, I expected Bales to get up and leave, but he didn’t. As the sun set, and the wind began to whip, Cady’s father kept his eyes locked on the Glades.

“You going to ask me what Gabriel meant when he said I was lying to Cady?”