My Husband's Smart House Only Listens to Her novel · Chapter 16 of 24

Chapter 16: The Apology That Wasn't Enough

Brogan's POV

My mother stood in my garage in her good coat, holding her handbag in both hands, and looked at the floor.

It was seven in the morning.

I hadn't seen her inside a room with me in five years, and she had gotten smaller.

"You came by yourself," I said.

"I took a taxi." She glanced up. "I've been outside for twenty minutes. I wasn't sure you would open."

"I almost didn't."

Mara came down the loft stairs behind me, barefoot, in my flannel shirt, with her hair wrecked.

She stopped on the bottom step, and my mother's eyes went to the shirt, and to the bare feet, and back to her face.

"Lucille," Mara said.

"Mara." My mother's mouth trembled and firmed. "I'm sorry to come at this hour."

"You don't have to be sorry about the hour."

"No," my mother said. "I have to be sorry about a good deal else. I'd like to start with Brogan, if he'll let me."

Nobody moved.

The space heater ticked.

I pulled out the one stool at the workbench, and she sat on it with her handbag on her knee.

"I read the slides again last night," she said. "All of them. I sat at the kitchen table until four, with my late husband's reading glasses on, because mine were upstairs."

"Mom."

"Please let me say it." She drew a breath. "I looked at the one with Mara's mother, and I thought, I know how he does this. I've seen it done."

I felt Mara's eyes on my back.

"When you were fifteen," my mother said, "and fell from the ladder."

"I know what happened."

"Your father told me, that night. He said Neil let go of it. On purpose, or in a temper, I'll never know which." She was gripping the handbag so hard the clasp had bitten her thumb. "He said, 'Lucille, that boy let go.' And I told him he was wrong."

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