The Heiress Strikes Back novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: The Holding Room

They took me to the state police barracks in Litchfield and put me in a room with a table.

It had one window, a clock, and a water cooler that gurgled.

Nobody read me a charge.

Nobody told me how long it would be.

"We're waiting on the complainant's statement," the younger trooper said, and left the door unlocked and shut.

I knew what unlocked and shut meant.

It meant the door was locked.

I sat with my wrists in my lap and the cuff marks still pink and stared at the clock.

Twenty-four years of other people's rooms had taught me how to wait.

At four o'clock I heard Peter's voice in the hall, low and furious.

At four-ten a different voice answered, calm and female and used to being obeyed.

Then the door opened, and Mrs. Brightwell came in alone in her camel cardigan, with her purse over one arm.

The trooper stood behind her.

"Five minutes, ma'am," he said.

"Thank you," said Mrs. Brightwell. "I'll need ten."

He shut the door.

She sat down across from me and put her purse on the table.

For a while she only looked.

She looked the way I'd seen people look at the ocean, trying to take in the whole of something.

"Your hands are shaking," she said at last.

"They didn't feed me."

"I'll fix that." She took a sandwich out of her purse, wrapped in wax paper. "Ham. I wasn't sure. I made two."

I looked at it.

I did not know a person could be this kind without wanting something.

"Eat," she said. "Then talk."

I ate half of it, and my hands steadied.

She waited until I had swallowed.

"I've asked you twelve questions," she said. "The thirteenth is this. When is your birthday?"

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