He Chose the Girl Who Tried to Kill Him novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Everything Said Aloud
"He is delirious," Harriet said.
She had both hands on Langston's good arm, and her voice was clear and carrying.
"The poor boy has been shot. He doesn't know what he's saying. Someone fetch a doctor."
"I know exactly what I'm saying, Mother," said Langston.
He took her hands off his sleeve, one at a time.
The stout woman from the Mission came out of her pew with her hymnal still in her fist.
"Let him speak, Harriet," she said.
Harriet turned and looked at her for the first time as an equal.
Then, slowly, she let go.
Langston swayed, caught himself on the rail, and spoke to the inspector alone.
"On the fourteenth of April, 1907, at ten at night, I drove a girl named Lottie Fenner to a doctor on Case Avenue."
The thin man from the paper had stopped writing and was only listening.
"She was nineteen and four months gone," Langston said. "She had a clean collar on. I was told it was a kindness."
"Who told you?" said the inspector.
"Ernest Severance."
The church moved.
It was one sound, three hundred people drawing in their breath.
"That is a lie," my father said from the side door.
His voice cracked on it.
"A madman's lie."
"Who gave you the money?" said the inspector.
"My mother." Langston's voice did not waver. "Two hundred dollars in an envelope. She also wrote a paper that Tuesday. A promise to Mr. Severance that the Haldanes would keep silent and see that his daughter married into the family, and that Severance's bank would carry the loan on the shipyards. She wrote it in her own hand. It is in the second drawer of her writing table, under the blue ink."
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