Chapter 25. Whose Build

Rae POV

We didn't talk about the sheet. Not really.

Doc came, sniffed the shredded cotton, and sat on the end of my bed with his bow tie undone for a long time. Then he said, "I need the lab results before I say anything I can't take back," and bagged the sheet, and left.

Wade burned the mattress cover in the barrel behind the shop himself. He didn't say why. I think he didn't want anyone else smelling it.

I felt fine. Better than fine. I'd never felt so good in my life, and that scared me more than the fever had.

So I did what I always do. I worked.

I finished the Bozeman tank in eleven days. Larch trees in deep green and bronze, climbing up from the bottom of the tank, and snow on every branch done the way I'd told Jesse at Rosie's: blue and lavender