Page 55 of The Coworker
“Nothing,” Fanning says, his eyes suddenly wide with panic. “Never mind.”
“Mr. Fanning.” I wrap one more layer of tape over his fingers. “Can you please tell me how this happened?”
“I already told you.” He averts his gaze. “A door closed on my hand. I swear.”
Of course, he could be telling the truth. Maybe a door did close on his hand, and that’s how he broke his finger. But then the question would be, was somebody holding his hand in the door when it closed? If they were, that person meant business. They meant to smash two of the fingers of his dominant hand to smithereens.
And why did he say the nameNelson?
Then again, it’s not like Nelson isn’t a common name. No, I don’t remember there being any other files with the last name Nelson on them when I was looking in the file cabinet. But it could be somebody’sfirstname. Couldn’t it?
I ensure that the tape has secured his fingers so he can’t bend them, and then Mr. Fanning is good to go. He holds up his hand, still looking skeptical that a roll of tape can heal his fracture, but he accepts it.
“Come back in a week,” I tell him. “We’ll see how it’s healing.”
He nods. “Thanks, Brooke. I appreciate it.”
“Just don’t slam your hand in any other doors, got it?”
He winces. “Yeah. I’ll try—believe me.”
Fanning slides down off the table, and I let Hunt back into the room to escort him to his cell. I watch the two of them disappear down the hallway, and I still can’t help but wonder how he got that fracture.
Goddamn Nelson.
He couldn’t have been talking about Shane. Maybe Shane was dangerous on the outside, but not here. If anything, Shane has been a target here in prison. He certainly isn’t going around breaking other people’s fingers.
But the truth is, I don’t entirely know what he is capable of.
Chapter 30
Tim has come by this weekend to build a birdhouse with Josh.
At least that is what Josh has told me about a thousand times over the last hour. Seriously, I thought kids getlessannoying as they get older. But it’s sweet that he’s so excited. I thought Josh might cool to Tim after finding out that he wasn’t secretly his father, but that hasn’t been the case at all. If anything, they’ve gotten closer in the last couple of weeks.
So have Tim and I.
At about eleven o’clock on Saturday morning, Tim rings the doorbell. We did exchange keysfor safety reasonssince he’s my neighbor, but he usually rings the bell. I appreciate that. We have to keep some boundaries here. I mean, we know each other so well, it would be easy enough for him to just move right in. But we are intentionally taking it slow.
When I open the door, Tim is standing there holding a few wooden boards in his right arm, and a thick hardcover book in the other. He looks over my shoulder. “Josh is upstairs?”
“Yes.”
He nods and leans in to kiss me. We have been making an effort not to let Josh know we are more than just friends. We’ll have to tell him eventually, but the thought makes me anxious. I’ve never had a relationship important enough to let my son know about it. This is a big deal.
Thankfully, Tim gets it. He’s fine about waiting.
He pulls away from me as soon as we hear Josh’s eager footsteps on the stairs. A second later, Josh bursts into the room. “We’re going to make a birdhouse!”
“You got it!” Tim dumps the wooden boards on the ground, then holds up the book in his other hand. “But first, I have a surprise for you…”
I get a good look at the book that Tim is holding. When I see the cover, my stomach sinks.
It’s our high school yearbook.
Why on earth would Tim bring that over here? I don’t even know what happened to my copy—I don’t think I even saw it, since I relocated before the end of the school year and was homeschooled for the remainder of the year. But our high school yearbook is the last thing I want to look at. And it’s the last thing I want Josh to see.
Oh my God, what if he sees a photograph of Shane and notices the resemblance?
