Chapter 13: Terms

Nobody ate the lamb.

The baker's wife left first, and she took both my hands before she went.

"There is a spare room over the bakery," she said. "It is yours tonight, or any night."

"Thank you," I said. "I'm staying."

Her husband, the baker, stood at the porch steps with his phone in his fist.

"I am calling the police," he said.

"Please don't," I said. "Not tonight. It's mine to decide, and I'm keeping the recording."

He looked at Dominik for a long moment, and then he put the phone away.

"Then I'll decide for myself who gets my bread," he said.

He walked down to the road without saying goodnight to anyone but me.

One by one the neighbors followed him. Not one of them shook Dominik's hand.

The old doctor stopped in front of him last.

He was shaking, but he stood straight.

"Monday morning, nine o'clock, at my surgery," he said. "You will bring every tablet that is left in that bottle."

"Yes, Herr Doktor," Dominik said.

"And you will say what you did in my waiting room, with my patients sitting there."

Dominik swallowed. "Yes."

The doctor looked at me, and his eyes were wet.

"I'm so sorry, my dear," he said.

Then he went down the steps with his hand on the rail.

The porch was empty after that, except for the four of them and me.

The lanterns swung on the dock. The lamb steamed on the table.

"Here is how it works," I said.

Nobody moved.

"I touch you, if I want to. You don't touch me. Not a hand on my arm, not a kiss on my head, nothing, unless I say yes out loud."

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