Chapter 19: The Stairs

Caleb's POV

The house was empty by nine.

The guards had gone to the gatehouse, the cook was at his sister's, and the manager had taken his coat and left without saying goodnight.

I did not blame him.

I stood in the front hall with the lights off and looked at the place where the rail used to be.

The Council officers had taken the broken wood away.

There was still sand on the marble, in the cracks between the tiles.

I sat down on the bottom stair.

It was the third stair from the floor.

I had run past it on the day of the stream.

I had run past my wife, who was standing at the top with her hand on her stomach, and I had gone down on my knees for the girl who lay on the marble.

I knew now she had fallen on purpose.

I had known it then, a little, in the part of me that looked at the camera first.

Joanna had not moved.

She had stood very still and watched me choose.

I put my elbows on my knees and pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes.

Mother had cut the bolts.

I kept coming back to that.

She had sat at my table for thirty years and asked if I wanted more potatoes, and she had gone upstairs with a screwdriver and a tin of paint.

I had not seen it, because I never looked at the places she did her work.

I let her do my looking for me.

Everything I'd done for a year had been small.

Small lies. Small checks to a girl I told myself needed help. Small silences at dinner. A phone turned face down.

I had not once done one big, stupid, cruel thing.

I had only done a hundred small ones, and the hundredth had been standing at the foot of the stairs.

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