Don, I Left as You Wished novel · Chapter 17 of 32
Chapter 17: Telling Pauline
I sat down.
Santo stayed standing, by the door.
"Mom," I said.
"The twenty-seventh," my mother said. "A Saturday. I got up for my milk and you were in the deep end with your legs around him."
My face went hot all the way down my neck.
"I turned my light off and sat in the dark and waited for one of you to come and tell me."
She folded her glasses.
"I've waited ten days. Tonight a man on a ladder pulled a camera off my back wall. So I knew it was tonight."
"Tullio has a picture," I said. "From that camera. From that night."
I told her the rest. The office. The end of the month. Every family, every priest, every group chat.
She listened without a word.
When I finished, she nodded once.
"We'll get to Tullio," she said. "First, him."
She turned in her chair and looked at Santo.
He'd lived in her house for fifteen years. I don't think she'd ever looked straight at him like that.
"Sit down, Santo."
He sat across from her. Not next to me. Across from her.
"You were thirteen," my mother said. "I was in this kitchen, at that counter, making a tray of sandwiches for your father's friends. My wedding lunch. I heard the gardener shouting."
"Yes."
"By the time I got out there she was on the stone, throwing up water, and you were gone. Nobody would tell me what happened. Your father said she slipped."
"She didn't slip."
"I know she didn't slip. She told me that night. I want to hear it from you." Her voice didn't rise. "Word by word. Tell me what you did to my daughter."
Santo put his hands flat on the table.
He told it word by word, the way she'd asked, and he left out nothing. The edge, the dress, his hands.
My mother didn't move.
"I stood and watched her go under. I counted. I got to eleven before the gardener came."
"Why were you counting?"
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