Chapter 11: The Three Women

At ten o'clock on Thursday morning the rain had stopped, and the pond outside my mother's window was the color of pewter.

Pris had asked the nurse to prop her up and tie her scarf in a bow.

She looked like a small, fierce bird on a hill of pillows.

I sat on her right.

Cordelia Kenworthy stood by the window in a charcoal coat, with her hands clasped in front of her.

Annalise stood at the foot of the bed in white, as far from me as the room allowed.

Piers waited in the corridor with the door open a crack.

"Thank you for coming," Pris said, as if we had accepted a dinner invitation.

"Aunt Pris," said Annalise stiffly.

"Lissie," my mother said.

"Sit, baby."

"This will take a minute."

Annalise did not sit.

"I'm going to tell it once," Pris said, "to all three of you, so nobody has to carry it for someone else."

She laid her thin hands flat on the blanket.

"On the ninth of March two thousand and two, I had a girl at nine-forty at night."

"Cordelia had hers at ten past six."

"They put the babies in the same glass room on the third floor."

"I couldn't sleep, so at three I walked down to look at mine, and then I looked at hers."

Her voice had gone very quiet and very steady.

"Cordelia's husband was in Greenville with a client, and she was asleep down the hall, as far as I knew."

"My husband had left me eight weeks before with a note and a debt."

"I stood at the glass and I saw two babies in white blankets."

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