Chapter 6

The sheriff's car pulled up the driveway at 10:12, headlights sweeping across the open garage door in two pale cones. Dane heard the engine idle, heard a door open, heard boots on the gravel — and didn't move.

Deputy Linda Marsh had been on the county force for eighteen years, and she'd seen every version of this scene a man can build for himself. She stepped into the garage, took in the collapsed wood-panel wall, the scattered glass, the man on the floor in the black silk shirt, and her face showed exactly nothing.

"Mr. Corrigan," she said.

"I didn't do anything."

"Nobody said you did."

She came further in, hands loose at her sides, and stopped six feet from him — a distance she'd learned to keep from men who sat on the floor of their own wreckage.

"You've got a visitation order," she said. "And I've got a phone call from a lawyer saying you've been told to stay away from a child who isn't legally yours."

"He was my son."

"Was." She let the word sit. "Mr. Corrigan, eleven months ago you signed a voluntary relinquishment of parental rights. There was no hearing, no adjudication, no appeals process — you walked into the courthouse and signed. That document was filed and it's enforceable tonight. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

Dane's jaw worked. He looked at her boots, at the floor, at the dust where the small footprints ended.

"I understand," he said.

"Good. Because here's the thing about that paper you signed — it didn't just give up your rights. It gave up your standing to be in this garage with that child. It gave up your standing to have him at your parties, your barbecues, your late nights. Every hour you've spent with him in the last eleven months has been without legal basis. Every time you acted like his father, you did it with no right."