Chapter 22: My Own Bedroom

The county station had one interview room, one coffee machine and one bench, and by ten that night the bench held the Garden Club.

I sat at the end of it in a smoky green dress.

Teddy was asleep across the lap of the librarian, who had driven forty minutes to take him and refused to let anyone else.

The sheriff came out of the back with a folded paper in his hand.

"She's asked to sign it here," he said. "Before the arraignment. I'd say that's irregular, but nobody's asked me."

He held the door.

Delphine sat at the steel table with her hair down, in the same cream dress, with her pearls in a plastic bag beside her.

A woman from the bank sat across from her in her slippers, with a notary's stamp, looking like she had been called out of bed.

The paper on the table was one page.

It said that Kittredge House belonged to Nora Kittredge, and always had.

Delphine did not look up as I came in.

"I should have read the form too," she said. "I read it. I just told myself it wasn't what it was."

"Delphine."

"Don't be kind to me. I couldn't bear it tonight."

She picked up the pen, and her hand did not shake, and she signed her name on the line.

The woman from the bank stamped it.

It made a small dry sound, the first honest stamp on that house since March.

The president took the page, read it twice with her glasses on the end of her nose, and tucked it into her purse.

"I'll walk it into the registry myself on Monday," she said. "I'll be the first person in the door."

I drove home with the paper's weight still in my chest.

The sheriff's deputies had taken the bolt off the main staircase that afternoon.

Teddy was asleep in the guest room by then, and two Garden Club women were playing gin in the kitchen to watch over him.

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