Chapter 3: The Packing Plant
It came out slowly, at the kitchen table, while Denise called Cole and Cole — it turned out — walked into his own house at almost the same minute, in the same state.
There’s a produce-packing plant on the edge of Brindle Falls that runs overnight shifts in season. Cash work. Cold, wet, brutal, the kind of work that doesn’t ask a lot of questions about how old you are if you’re big enough to keep up.
For eight weekends, that’s where our sons had been.
Nathan and Cole had taken the Friday and Saturday overnight shifts, hosing down lines and hauling crates in a refrigerated room until their hands cracked, then catching a few hours of sleep in Cole’s car before doing it again.
The sleepover lie covered the overnight hours. Each boy told each mother he was safe at the other’s house, because if they’d told us the truth, we’d have marched down to that plant and dragged them home — and Nathan knew it.
