Chapter 10: Soup

By noon the four of us were in the lodge office with the door locked and the blinds down.

Cal sat on the edge of the desk, and his cousin sat on the filing cabinet with a bag of pretzels.

Shanna took the one good chair, and she had stopped crying an hour ago.

"I'd like to make a list," she said.

"A list," Cal said.

"I'm a nurse. When something is wrong with a body, I make a list." She held up a pen. "What do we know, and what can we prove?"

The cousin raised her hand.

"We know he's a snake," she said.

"What can we prove?"

"Nothing yet. But I'm very sure."

Shanna wrote it down anyway.

"We can already prove he lied," she said. "What we can't prove is that his mother knew."

"I have Diane's voice on speaker," I said. "She wasn't surprised."

"Not surprised is not the same as knew." Shanna tapped the pen. "I want her to say it out loud. I want it on tape."

"Sunday," I said.

They all looked at me.

"Diane invited me to dinner," I said. "She wants me to sign nothing and come home. I'll go. I'll sit in her dining room and let her talk."

"And I'll be in the car outside with the window cracked," Shanna said. "I know the street. I've parked there forty Sundays."

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