Chapter 14: Eleven Years

"Yes," my mother said.

I stood on the sidewalk outside the bakery with the phone against my ear and could not make my mouth work.

"I'm at the apartment," she said. "Come here. Don't say the rest on a street."

It was eleven blocks, and I walked them on my bad leg without feeling it.

She was at the card table in her work jacket with a mug in front of her.

The casserole pan was washed and drying on the rack.

Cal's door was shut.

There was a sound behind it that was a man pretending to be a wall.

"Sit," she said.

"I'll stand."

"Then stand." She turned the mug a quarter turn. "The report came to the yard office, in the mail, three weeks after the lake."

"From the county."

"Addressed to the parents of the boy. Your father was dead by then, so it came to me."

She looked at the table.

"I read it standing at the filing cabinet. Then I went next door and put it in front of Joan Kincaid."

"What did she say?"

"She sat down on her kitchen floor."

I kept my hand on the back of the chair.

"Eleven years, Mom."

"Yes."

"You watched me wear that medal at school. You watched them stand me up in the gym and clap."

"I did."

"And you knew who dragged me out."

"I knew a girl of eleven had done what grown men on that dock did not." She said it evenly.

"I knew she was sick over it. I knew the town had decided who you were, and it was a good thing to be."

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