Hook: crumbs on the dog
Your little cousin says, I didn't eat the cookies. There are crumbs on the dog, crumbs on your cousin's shirt, and the cookie jar is on the floor beside a chair. Nobody told you what happened, but you know. You made an inference: a conclusion built from clues plus what you already know.
Authors rely on this. They rarely say Grandpa was afraid of getting old. They show you, and trust you to work it out.
The Rink Keeper
(A short story written for this website.)
Every night in January, at exactly nine o'clock, Grandpa pulled on his old green parka and went out to flood the rink. He had built it in the backyard the winter my mother was born, and he had flooded it every winter since.
This year, his parka hung on the hook until 9:20.
"You going out?" I asked.
"In a minute." He was watching the hockey game, but when I asked him the score, he didn't know it.
At 9:35 he stood up, slowly, one hand on the arm of the chair. Outside, the thermometer by the back door read minus eighteen. He uncoiled the hose from the laundry tub, where it had been warming all day, and I followed him without asking.
The water steamed as it hit the ice. Grandpa worked from the far boards toward the house, the way he always did, so he wouldn't trap himself. But twice the hose slipped in his glove, and the spray went sideways into the snowbank.
"Cold makes the rubber stiff," he said. I hadn't asked.
When the first pass was done, he stood at the edge, breathing hard, little clouds coming out of him. Then he held the nozzle out to me.
"Thin coats," he said. "Thin coats or it'll be bumpy. Your mother never got it right."
I took it. My first pass was crooked, and I missed a corner. He didn't say anything. He just pointed.
When we went in, he hung up his parka and left the hose by the door instead of coiling it.
"Same time tomorrow," he said. "Nine o'clock. Don't be late."
What dialogue reveals indirectly
In fiction, dialogue often says one thing and reveals another. Look at Grandpa's last lines: Same time tomorrow. Nine o'clock. Don't be late. On the surface it's an order. Underneath, he is asking the narrator to come back, and he is handing over the job. The irony is gentle: he was the one who was late tonight.
Also watch actions that break a pattern: he left the hose by the door instead of coiling it. A man with a forty-year routine changes it on purpose. The most likely inference: he expects the narrator to use the hose tomorrow.