Chapter 24: The Suitcase Again

Miles's POV

They put Clara's mother in the back room at fourteen Alder Lane, in the bed Tom Doyle had carried down from the attic himself.

The window faced the garden.

From the pillow she could see the low stone wall, bare in the cold, and the roofline of my father's house beyond it.

I stood in the doorway at dusk with a tray of tea I had been told to bring.

"You're the neighbor boy," she said.

"I'm Miles."

"You climbed that wall every afternoon of that summer."

"I was six."

"You sat on the grass beside her and never said a word. I watched you from this window."

Her voice was a thread.

"Clara's father thought you were shy. I thought you were keeping guard."

"I didn't know that was what I was doing."

"It is what you've been doing for twenty-four years." She turned her head. "Come here."

I put the tray down and sat on the edge of the chair.

She took my hand in a hand that weighed nothing.

"Don't make her ask twice," she said. "She will not ask twice. She learned that from me."

"I won't."

"Say it again."

"I won't, Mrs. Doyle."

"Barbara." Her mouth curved. "I'd like one person in this house to use my name."

I sat with her until she slept.

Then I took the tray down to the kitchen.

Clara was at the sink with her back to me, washing a cup that was already clean.

I put my arms around her from behind.

She leaned back against me without turning round.

"She's asleep," I said.

"I know."

"She told me to be good to you."

"She told me to be good to Lydia."

"We're an easy family to give orders to."

She laughed, a breath against my wrist, and turned in my arms and kissed me, slowly, with her hands wet on my neck.

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