He paused.
“The sanitation department. Kinsley’s father. The neighbor who posted the photo. And possibly the police.”
I closed my eyes.
Of course.
The whole town was about to turn a good man into a headline.
When I pulled into the yard just after noon, I saw Silas’s garbage truck parked near the maintenance shed.
He was standing beside it alone, drinking from a dented thermos.
No one else stood near him.
Not one person.
Men who had known him for years suddenly found very interesting things to look at on the opposite side of the lot.
That made me angrier than the comments online.
Cowardice is loud on the internet.
But in real life, it often looks like silence.
I walked straight over to him.
“Silas.”
He turned.
His face was unreadable as ever.
But his eyes looked tired.
More tired than yesterday.
“Ma’am.”
“Are you all right?”
