Chapter 10: The Kitchen Table

I told them at the kitchen table, because it was the only place in that house where anyone ever told the truth.

I did not tell it well.

I said it in pieces, between breaths, with Tiernan's hand heavy on the back of my chair.

When I got to the part about the four minutes, the boxer stood up so fast his bench fell over.

"I'm going to her house," he said.

"Sit down," Dean said.

"Dean."

"Sit down."

"She put a dying baby in Ma's arms and walked off with Lexi!"

"I know what she did," Dean said.

His voice shook, and I realized he was holding the edge of the table to keep from breaking it.

"We are not going to her house tonight."

He looked at each of them in turn.

"We will do nothing tonight that Ma can't be proud of."

The boxer sat back down with a jerk.

The surgeon had gone grey.

The firefighter had put his head in his hands.

The youngest was staring at the wall.

Not one of them said a word.

Then Hannah spoke.

She sat at the far end with her hands folded, quite calm.

"Did she say the baby had the mark?" she asked.

I blinked.

"The one she took. She said that baby had the little moon."

"Yes."

"The baby I buried didn't," Hannah said.

Every head turned.

"I noticed that the second week," she said.

"I told Frank. I told the doctor. He said it could come in later, that birthmarks sometimes do. I told myself that."

She was looking at nothing.

"She had Frank's eyes and nothing of mine.

Every day I wondered, and every day I told myself it was silly to wonder about a baby who smiled at me."

Her voice cracked.

"I loved her. Do you understand that? I did not know whose she was, and I loved her all the same."

"Ma," the surgeon whispered.

"I won't hate her," Hannah said.

"I will hate Janet Winslow until I die, and I'll do it gladly.

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