I Was Never One of Them novel · Chapter 20 of 24
Chapter 20: Tea
Hazel's POV
Constance came to my mother's house on Sunday afternoon, alone, in a gray coat, carrying a cream envelope.
I opened the door and did not let her in.
"Hazel, dear. I came to see Ruth."
"She's resting."
"I'm not," my mother called from the kitchen. "Let her in, Hazel. I'll make the tea."
I stood aside.
Constance walked through our living room.
She sat at the kitchen table, where my mother had once sat and laughed with my brother over cereal.
My mother set down three cups.
She poured one for Constance first.
"Ruth," Constance said. "I'll be direct. The papers are going to say terrible things about my son, and about me, and the foundation will be asked to account for itself."
"I've read them."
"The money is yours either way. Nothing changes. Your treatments, your medications, the new wing in your name. All I ask is a statement from you and from Hazel. That you were always grateful. That the foundation acted in good faith."
She laid the cream envelope on the table.
"And that Mr. Briggs's account of that night is not one you can confirm."
My mother looked at the envelope.
She looked at it for a long time.
I stood by the stove with my arms folded and my heart going.
"Constance," my mother said. "Do you know what I did the night my son died?"
"I imagine you grieved."
"I sat on the porch. I waited for him to come home. I waited until the sun came up, and then a policeman came up the walk, and I knew."
"Ruth."
"Eight years later I learned that while I was sitting there, you were standing over your boy with a robe on, telling another boy what to say."
Constance did not blink.
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