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didn’t seem to hear. His back was turned, his arms stretched out in front of him. Addie realized, with some shock, that he was catching snowflakes on his tongue.
When was the last time she’d thought of snow as anything but a hindrance?
She opened the door of her car, turned the ignition and carefully pulled the car away. In retrospect, she did not know what made her look back into the rearview mirror. If not for the yellow eye of the streetlight in front of the diner, she might never have seen him sitting on the bare curb with his head bowed.
With a curse, she took a hard left, curving around the green to the front of the diner again.“Do you need a ride?”
“No. Thanks, though.”
Addie’s fingers flexed on the steering wheel. “You haven’t got a place to stay, have you?” Before he could protest, she got out of the car. “It so happens I know of a room for rent. The bad news is you’re going to have a roommate whose disposition isn’t always very sunny. The good news is if you get hungry in the middle of the night, there’s a hell of a kitchen you can raid.” As Addie spoke, she unlocked the door of the diner again and stepped over the threshold. She found Jack holding back, haloed by the falling snow. “Look. My father could use the company. You’d actually be doing me a favor.”
Jack didn’t move a muscle. “Why?”
“Why? Well, because when he spends too much time alone he gets . . . upset.”
“No. Why are you doing this for me?”
Addie met his suspicion head-on. She was doing this because she knew what it was like to hit rock bottom and to need someone to give you a leg up. She was doing this because she understood how a world jammed with phones and e-mail and faxes could still leave you feeling utterly alone. But she also knew if she said either of these things, Jack’s pride would have him halfway down the street before she could take another breath.
So Addie didn’t answer. Instead, she started across the checkerboard floor of the diner.
Tonight, one of the Jeopardy! categories had been Greek mythology. This hero was given permission to bring his love Eurydice back from the underworld but lost her by turning back too quickly to see if she was following.
Addie wouldn’t be like Orpheus. She kept walking with her eyes fixed ahead until she heard the faint jingle of bells on the door, proof that Jack had come in from the cold.
September 1999
North Haverhill,
New Hampshire
A ldo LeGrande had a four-by-four inch tattoo of a skull on his forehead, which was enough to make Jack take the bunk farthest away from him. He didn’t react when Jack set his things down, just continued to write in a purple composition notebook whose cover had been hand-decorated with scribbled swastikas and cobras.
Jack began to set belongings in a small tub that sat at the foot of the bed. “Wouldn’t do that if I were you,” Aldo said. “Mountain uses that to piss in in the middle of the night.”
Jack let the warning slide off his back. He had spent a month at Grafton County. Every new inmate started out in maximum security and was then allowed to petition for a move to medium security after two weeks of good behavior. Two weeks after that, the inmate could move to minimum security. Each time Jack had moved pods, he’d had to face some kind of test from the inmates already living there. In maximum, he’d been spat at. In medium, he’d been jabbed in the kidneys and gut in corners too dark for the security cameras to see.
“Mountain will get over it,” Jack said tightly. He stacked his books from the prison library last and then shoved the plastic container under the lower bunk.
“Like to read?” Aldo asked.
“Yes.”
“How come?”
Jack glanced over his shoulder. “I’m a teacher.”
Aldo grinned. “Yeah, well, I work for the state paving roads, but you don’t see me painting a dotted yellow line down the middle of the floor.”
“It’s a little different,” Jack said. “I like knowing