The Second Life of the Malicious Colonel's Daughter novel · Chapter 4 of 24

Chapter 4: The Second Question

He was at my door at eight with a house key in his hand.

"Make me a copy," he said.

"You live in a rented house on Elm Street. Your landlord has a copy."

"I want a spare."

"You want to see if I'll talk to you."

"I want a spare," he said, and put the key on the counter.

Marva looked up from the register and then very carefully back down.

I cut the key.

The little brass shavings fell on the mat, and he stood there with his hands in his pockets, watching me work.

"Question two," I said when I handed it over.

"Ask."

"Why did you ask for my father's case?"

He took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

In daylight his face looked younger without them, and tired.

"My cousin drove the second truck," he said.

The shop went quiet.

Even the radio on Marva's shelf seemed to go quiet.

"He was twenty-three," Isaiah said. "I was one of his pallbearers."

He looked at the floor.

"His mother asked me at the graveside who signed for those brakes."

"What did you say?"

"I didn't have an answer."

"My father signed."

"Your father signed. Somebody gave him sheets that were already stamped. Nobody has ever asked who."

"I asked."

"I know. It's in your testimony. A page and a half."

"They cut it off."

"They did."

He put the glasses back on.

"That's why I asked," he said. "Because nobody finished the question."

I said nothing.

I turned and swept the shavings into the dustpan, and my hands were steady, and I was glad of it.

He stayed.

He sat in the corner of the shop on a folding stool and answered the phone when Marva went out.

He handed me tools without being asked.

He was good at it.

He had a feel for what the next hand would want.

At five, Marva took her purse and her thermos and stopped at the door.

"Lock up behind yourself, Jessamine," she said, and looked at him, and looked at me.

"Good night, Marva."

"Don't do anything I wouldn't."

"You would do all of it," I said.

"I would," said Marva, and went out.

The sign flipped to CLOSED.

I turned off the front lights and the shop went blue and dim, and the streetlight came in through the glass.

He was standing by the workbench in the back.

I walked to him slowly.

The workshop smelled of machine oil and hot brass.

A cot stood against the wall where Marva's husband used to nap.

A dozen keys hung on a pegboard above it, swinging a little in the draft.

"I should go," he said.

"You should."

"I'm going to ask you to say it."

"Say what?"

"That I should."

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