Chapter 13: What Delaney Knows

Delaney told it at my grandmother's table, with her sleeve still pushed up over the bruise.

I made her a cup of tea, then a second, because her hands kept stealing the first.

I texted Jonas while the kettle ran.

He wrote back, "Ten minutes," and it was eight.

"I was eighteen," Delaney said. "It was the Saturday before Christmas."

"Your father."

"He drove a bread route. He was coming home on the turnpike at ten at night, in the rain."

She turned the cup around on the saucer.

"A white pickup came up behind him much too fast."

"And?"

"It clipped his back corner, and his truck went over the guardrail."

"What about the pickup?"

"It didn't stop."

Jonas had come in quietly and stood by the refrigerator in his coat.

She glanced at him, and he nodded for her to go on.

"The state report said he lost control on the ice," she said. "One vehicle. Nobody else involved."

"How do you know it wasn't?"

"Because of Easter."

The Tollivers had hosted Easter dinner, three months after the funeral.

Delaney had carried the plates into the kitchen and found Dennis at the sink, drunk, with his head down.

He was saying to Marjorie, "I see his truck every night. I see it go over."

Marjorie answered in the voice she used for church committees.

"You drove home from the dealership party, Dennis. That's all it was."

"Then she saw me in the doorway," Delaney said.

"She smiled at me. She said, 'Honey, you're tired. You didn't hear anything.'"

I thought of Marjorie in my front hall, telling Delaney she was exhausted.

"The week after the funeral, she sat my mother down at our kitchen table," Delaney said.

"She had a paper from the church fund. My mother signed it."