Chapter 22: Ask Me Properly

Miriam did not come any closer.

She stood in the doorway with the jacket over her arms and her back very straight.

Behind me, Gavin set down a can of paint and stayed where he was.

"This was in Willa's wardrobe," Miriam said. "At the back, under her winter coats."

She held it out a little.

"The pocket has a wristband from the gallery on Pearl Street. It is dated four years ago."

I took the jacket.

It smelled of cedar and someone else's perfume.

I put my thumb on the green cuff, and it was stiff with old oil.

"I called you a thief for three years," said Miriam.

She said it in her ordinary voice, flat and precise, the voice that read the minutes at board meetings.

"I had you searched in front of the housekeeper.

"I let my son believe you had ruined his life. I did not once ask what you had actually done."

The frame shop owner had come to the doorway behind her and stopped.

Miriam did not turn around.

"I withdrew my motion against Gavin on Monday," she said. "He is still chairman of the company. He has declined it."

"I have," Gavin said. "I'm building my own."

"So I hear." Her mouth tightened. "He rents a desk above a laundromat. I have been told it smells."

I almost laughed, and I saw that she almost did too.

"I'm not asking you to forgive me," said Miriam. "I don't think I would."

"Thank you."

"I am asking if I may be told when the show closes.

"I would like to see the kitchen once more, with the lights on."

It was the hardest sentence I had ever heard her say.

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