Chapter 4: I'm Not Sorry

Cold water hit him square in the chest.

Justin Hostetler didn't step back.

He stood in the middle of the market aisle with his gray shirt going dark and the stream pounding his shoulders, and he kept hold of the paper bag.

"Mom!" I yelled.

"Stay out of it, Susanna."

"That's a doctor!"

"That's a man who put his hands on my daughter!" Mom yelled, loud enough for the whole row to hear.

The woman holding the dills lowered her jar.

Two men at the next stand lifted their phones.

I grabbed Mom's arm and the hose swung, and the spray went across the pickle table and soaked six jars of dills.

"Oh, for heaven's sake," Mom said, and shut the nozzle.

Water ran down Justin's face and dripped off his chin.

He set the paper bag on our table, very carefully, away from the puddle.

"I deserved that," he said. "I'll leave your daughter's follow-up with another doctor, so I'm no longer hers."

"You're no longer anything of hers," Mom said.

"I'll be at Stanley's on Sunday," he said. "I'd like to start fresh with you, Carol."

"There's no fresh," Mom said.

He nodded, and walked away through the crowd, leaving wet footprints on the concrete.

He didn't look at me once.

I stood there with my pulse in my ears and eight people staring.

"Well," the woman with the dills said. "I'll take two of the soaked ones, half price."

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