Chapter 14: Five Letters

A social worker took the boy at midnight.

My mother went with them, and the boy looked back at me over her shoulder until the doors swung shut.

Hank drove me home without a word.

He put a kettle on, set the blue binder in front of me on his kitchen table, and went up to bed.

"She left it in my car," he said from the stairs. "It's yours."

I did not want to open it.

I opened it anyway.

The first page was a hospital intake sheet from five years ago.

Under it, in neat blue pen, ran a log.

Day one. Patient asleep four hours. Asked for J. twice. Told him she was delayed.

Day two. Refused food. Drank water when I held the cup.

Day nine. Patient called me a liar. I said yes.

I turned the pages slowly.

She had written down every dose, every nightmare, every night I walked the apartment until dawn.

She had written down the days I was cruel to her.

Day two hundred and four. Patient said I was a vulture waiting for the body. Slept better after. Let him.

I had said that to her.

I had forgotten it, and she had not.

Behind the log pages was a plastic sleeve of papers.

The first was a bill from the emergency room, with a balance of one hundred and ninety thousand dollars.

Under it was the stamped closing statement on a house.

It was her father's house, the one with the porch swing where I had first met her.

She had sold it in the second month.

The date was stapled to the ER bill, and the balance read zero.

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