Regret is the Punishment novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Envelope

Cyril arrives at the hospital with cash and a lawyer's statement, Sue refuses in front of her sister, and the truck's dash camera clip goes online.

Jerome turned his head when he heard her.

He looked at Darla, then at the glass, then at me.

"Don't talk to her," he said to our daughter, very gently. "Close your eyes, bug."

Darla closed them.

He stood, crossed the room and pulled the blind down over the window.

The last thing I saw was my own face reflected in the dark glass, and the soot on it.

I sat down on the floor of the hallway.

"I called you," I whispered to the wall.

I didn't know how to carry that.

My sister found me there at six in the morning.

She is three years younger than I am and a hospital pharmacist.

She walked down the hall as though she'd been walking toward me all night.

She put a coffee in my hands and sat down beside me on the floor without a word.

"You don't have to hold my hand," I said.

"I'm not going to hold your hand."

She took it anyway.

We sat like that until the elevator at the end of the hall dinged.

Cyril stepped out.

He wore a pressed shirt and carried a manila envelope, and he looked like a man who had slept eight hours.

He saw me, and then he saw my sister.

For half a second, he almost turned around.

Then he smoothed his face and walked toward us.

"Sue," he said, low. "Can we talk somewhere private?"

"No."

"It's important."

"It's a hospital hallway," my sister said. "Everything here is private. Talk."

He gave her a small, polite smile and kept his eyes on me.

"I'm sorry about your daughter. I mean that."

"You told me not to move."

"I told you a lot of things. You were upset."

He held the envelope out.

I didn't take it.

"Ten thousand dollars," he said, still quiet. "For the family. No strings."

Then he drew a single typed page out of the envelope and held it where I could read it.

It said that on Thursday afternoon, I had parked on Harbor Lane of my own choice.

It said I had not been blocked by any vehicle, and that I'd acted alone.

It said I had not discussed the incident with Mr. Nimick, who was at his boat shed inspecting a hull.

"My lawyer wrote it," he said. "You sign, and nobody drags my wife into this. It protects you too."

I read the page twice.

My sister read it over my shoulder.

"This says you didn't do anything," she said.

"I didn't. I had a conversation."

"Your truck was nose to nose with her car."

"Whose word is that?"

She looked at me.

I looked at him, and I understood something I should have understood five months ago.

He had never once been afraid for me.

He had only been afraid for himself.

"No," I said.

"Sue."

"No. I told the fire chief last night, with my name on it."

His face went flat.

"Then you can take that back," he said. "A statement made in a state of shock is nothing."

"I wasn't in shock when I stayed in that car."

"Careful," he said, very softly. "Think about how this goes."

"A married woman came to my shed every Thursday for five months. I turned her down for weeks."

"She got hysterical when I said it was over, and she blocked the road on purpose."

My sister made a small sound in her throat.

"You'd say that," I said.

"I'll say whatever I have to. And who do you think they'll believe?"

"A man with a company, or the woman everyone will call a child killer by lunchtime?"

I stood up.

My knees held, which surprised me.

"She is alive," I said. "Don't you ever say that word near her."

"I only meant it as a warning."

"I know exactly what you meant."

I took the envelope out of his hand.

For a second his eyes gleamed, because he thought I was taking it.

I tore it in half, then in half again.

The ten thousand dollars fell out as loose twenties, and they scattered across the hallway tile.

A security guard at the far end looked up from his phone.

A nurse stopped with a chart against her chest.

"I have your text," I said, clearly enough for both of them to hear.

"'Do not move. Let them honk.' It's on my phone, with the time on it."

I watched his throat move.

"You don't want to do this," he said.

"Get out."

"Sue, listen."

"Get out of this hospital before I show it to every person on this floor."

He bent, with a look of sick, quick calculation, and picked up the typed page, not the money.

Then he walked to the elevator without looking back.

The doors closed on him.

My sister shook her head and began picking twenties off the floor.

"He's going to ruin you," she said.

"He's going to try."

Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

Then it buzzed again.

She drew it out, and I watched her face change.

"Sue," she said. "Don't look at this."

I took the phone from her hand.

It was a video, posted at 5:12 that morning, on a page called Port Calder Talk.

The caption said, "SHE SAT THERE. Watch what this woman did while a child burned. Share this."

It was shot through the windshield of a fire engine, straight at the back of my sedan.

The horn was blaring, and the view count was already past forty thousand.

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