Chapter 19: What My Mother Kept

Rafe's POV

Hattie's car pulled up at ten past ten.

I saw the headlights swing across my kitchen window from where I sat on the back step.

She shut off the engine and sat in it for a long time.

Then she went inside her house, and her upstairs light came on and stayed on.

She had told me to leave her kitchen at nine with a kiss and no promise.

Her mother's rotten step was fixed, and her list was clean, and my name was off it.

I had done everything I could think of, and I still did not know where she had been.

I didn't go to her door.

She had told me not to come until I'd done something besides be sorry, and I could not tell if what I'd done counted.

So I sat in the cold.

At midnight the back door opened behind me, and my mother came out in her blue robe with two mugs.

She sat on the step beside me, handed me one, and didn't say anything for a while.

My mother cleans offices in Mansfield and has worked four jobs since my father went to the county jail.

Her hands are cracked from bleach.

"You've been out here since Saturday," she said.

"I like the air."

"You like to suffer where she can see it."

I nearly laughed.

"Mom."

"Rafe, I need to tell you something. I should have told you a year ago."

I set the mug down on the boards.

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