I looked at Cole, waiting for him to laugh, waiting for him to tell my father that he had mistaken him for someone else, or that he had been helping a stranger. “Cole?” I said.
Cole remained silent, his gaze fixed on the floorboards between them.
“I know what I saw, Evelyn, and your husband has no defense,” Arthur said, his voice dropping to a harsh whisper.
“Cole, please,” I said. “Just tell him he is wrong.”
Cole looked up, his eyes meeting mine, but he did not say a word to deny it.
Arthur turned the brass door handle and stepped back out onto the porch, the cold air rushing into the hallway. “I told you what kind of man he was before you took that heavy brass key, Evelyn.”
I stood in the doorway as Arthur walked back to his sedan, leaving Cole standing silent in the hallway.
By six the next morning, the burner under the aluminum percolator was already blue.
The wood stove in the living room had not been fed since midnight, and the kitchen floorboards were cold enough to freeze through my wool socks.
