Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 12 of 32

Chapter 12: The Whole List

We sat on the deck at the edge of the deep end.

Not close. Two loungers' width apart, on the warm stone, with our feet in the water.

He'd put his feet in without thinking about it.

I noticed. I didn't say so.

The house was dark above us. The ring winked on the drain.

"The first day," Santo said. "You came out the back door in a yellow dress. Your mother had bought it for the wedding lunch."

"I remember the dress."

"I'd been watching you all morning. You stood next to your mother like you were afraid to touch anything."

"I was afraid to touch anything."

"I walked up behind you and pushed you in with both hands."

He said it to the water, not to me.

"You went down and came up and went down. I stood there. I counted. I got to eleven."

"Eleven what?"

"Seconds. Before the gardener got there. I counted them."

My throat closed.

I hadn't known that.

"I didn't go for help," he said. "I didn't yell. I just watched."

He went on.

He didn't skip anything.

The dolls, three of them, the ones my mother bought on layaway.

The Easter dress. Red paint from the garage, a whole can, while I was wearing it.

The cousins. He'd taught them the words. Bastard on Mondays, stray on Fridays, because it was funnier with a schedule.

The braces, at fourteen. He'd told the whole school his father paid for my teeth because my mother paid for his father in other ways.

The prom photo he'd cut my face out of and taped to the fridge.

The time he locked me out of the house in sleet, and I sat on the porch for two hours because I wouldn't knock.

Things I'd forgotten. Things I'd made myself forget.

He remembered every one.

He said each one plainly.

He didn't say he was sorry after each one.

He didn't say anything to make it softer.

When he was done, the night was very quiet.

"That's everything I can remember," he said. "There's probably more."

I looked at the water.

My feet looked pale and strange down there in the moonlight.

"Why?" I said.

"Because I believed something."

He pulled his feet out of the water and sat with his arms on his knees.

"My mother died a year before you came. They said it was her heart. That was for outside the family. Inside, everybody knew she was found in this pool."

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