Chapter 14: Home

Archie fell asleep in the truck, still holding the steamship.

I carried him up to his old room at Margot's house and took his shoes off.

Over the bed hung the print of the blue swallow.

I stood and looked at it for a while.

Then I pulled the blanket to his chin and went downstairs.

Margot was in the kitchen with the kettle in her hand and no water in it.

She had driven behind us the whole way and had not said a word.

I leaned on the doorframe.

"You offered him all of it," I said. "Your mother's shares, in front of his staff."

"Yes."

"For one afternoon of walking out the door."

"Yes."

"He didn't want them. He wanted you to give them."

"I know that now." She set the kettle down. "I knew it as soon as he started reading."

"Then why do it?"

"Because it was the only thing I owned that was worth something to him."

She looked at the sink, not at me.

Her left palm was healed to a pink line.

I thought of the night I cleaned it and let her lie to me.

My hands remembered the weight of that hand.

I wanted to cross the kitchen and take it again, and I stayed where I was.

She stood very straight in her wet coat, with her hair still damp from the run up the lawn, and did not ask me for anything.

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