Chapter 15: The Bench

"Sit down, Wyatt," Joan Kincaid said. "It's a long bench and I don't bite."

I sat at the far end of it, on the wet side.

She unscrewed the thermos and poured a cup and held it out.

It was the same blue thermos Sadie and I had used for eleven years, and I understood who had sent it.

"She flew in this afternoon," Joan said. "She's in the house. I told her to stay there, and for once she's listening."

"I don't want to talk about her."

"Then don't talk. I'll talk. You just sit."

The lake slapped the pilings under us.

"I was in the emergency room when they brought you in," Joan said. "Your mother wasn't there yet."

"And Sadie?"

"In the corridor, soaked to the neck, in a blanket a nurse had put on her."

I looked at the water.

"She had your blood on her sleeve from where she'd held your head against the ladder."

"What did she say?"

"I knelt down, and she said, I killed him, Mom. I killed Wyatt."

"She said that?"

"Three times." Joan's voice was perfectly even.

"Then a nurse bent down and said, Honey, what happened? My daughter looked at me, and then at the nurse."

"And she said I jumped in."

"She said you jumped in to save her."

My coffee had gone cold in my hands.

"I knew it was a lie," Joan said. "I was her mother. I knew it the second she said it."

She turned the cup on the bench.

"The nurse was crying and the doctor took her hand. I thought of my job and my girl, and I let it stand."

"You buried the report."

"Four years later, when the county asked to close the file. I made a call."

She did not look away.

"That's mine. Not hers. She was eleven."

"She was eleven and she kept it going for eleven years."

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