Chapter 10: Ask Me When You're Not Angry

The doctor looked at Anthony and then at me, and his mouth came open.

He had stood in my kitchen two weeks ago with a form. He knew exactly whose face this was.

"Mr. Kensington," he said. "This is Ciara Ellingwood. She has been reported deceased."

"Then she has had a remarkable week," Anthony said. "Do you have a court order?"

"There's a voluntary admission signed by the family."

"I'm the family. I'm withdrawing it."

"Mrs. Kensington signed it."

"Mrs. Kensington," Anthony said, "is not Ciara's family."

Behind the doctor Constance had stepped out of her car.

She stood on the sidewalk with one gloved hand on the door.

She looked at me for a long, still moment, and I watched every plan she had made adjust itself behind her eyes.

"Anthony," she said. "Get in the car."

"Take Camille home, Mother."

"That girl died in a lake."

"Then she climbed out of it."

He took my elbow, my left one, and walked me down the steps past the doctor and the men with the blanket.

Camille had come out onto the stoop behind us.

She stood there with a black scrap of burned paper on her cream sleeve, and I did not look back at her.

His car was parked two doors down.

He put me in the passenger seat and drove, and for six blocks neither of us said a word.

His apartment was on the nineteenth floor, with a wall of glass over the lake and almost no furniture.

He put the tote bag on the kitchen island and looked at it, and then at me.

"Are those what I think they are?"

"They're my letters. All four."

His face did something complicated.

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