He Took Me to Catch the Rat, But the Rat Was Him novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: Say It

Cathal's POV

She did not say a word in the car.

She sat beside me with her mother's green coat buttoned to the throat over her nightgown.

She watched the wipers push the sleet off the glass.

Bridie had caught my sleeve at the diner door and said, "Go after her."

I had gone, and Aisling had let me open the car door, and that was all I knew.

For six years I had pictured this morning with the sound turned off.

In every version she screamed, or she left, or she looked at me the way the parish looked at her mother.

She did none of it.

At Almond Street she walked past the Buick and past the men on the corner, up the three steps and through the unlocked door.

She climbed the stairs without turning on a light, because every lamp in my house was already burning.

I followed her into the room with the iron bed and shut the door.

She stood in the middle of the floor with her back to me.

"Take off your tie," she said.

I wore the blue silk one.

It was the first Tuesday, and on the first Tuesday I put on a tie.

I wore it for a girl from Scranton who had once been locked in a cellar and now carried a nursing license.

I pulled the knot loose and slid it from my collar.

"Sit," Aisling said.

I sat on the edge of the bed.

She turned and took the tie out of my hand, and she looked at my face for a long time.

Her eyes were dry, and her mouth was white at the corners.

"Say why you left my mother's funeral," she said.

"I told you I couldn't stay."

"Say why."

I had never said it aloud to anyone, and I did not know where to put my hands.

"Because I put her in that pew," I said.

"Nine people came to bury her, and every one of the rest stayed home because of a call I made."

I kept my hands flat on my knees.

"I stood at the back, and I counted the empty chairs."

"I couldn't be in the room with what I'd done to her."

Aisling's breath came out through her nose, slowly.

"You let them think it was my father," she said.

"For six years, you let them think it."

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