Chapter 14: Telling Him

"I can't stay," I said. "I'm only dropping off a sweater."

"Nonsense." Lyle leaned on the doorframe. "Doreen's made a meatloaf. You're family now, aren't you? Practically."

Dena slid off the dryer.

She didn't look at either of us.

Somebody knocked on the front door, three hard raps.

Lyle's head turned.

Doreen's voice went high and sweet in the hall, the voice she used on landlords.

Then Thatcher was standing in the kitchen in his navy coat, looking around at the linoleum.

"Mr. Purdy," he said. "My mother sent me. She'd like Dena for dinner tonight. To say a proper goodbye. I'll have her back by ten."

Lyle's whole face lit up.

He clapped Thatcher on the shoulder.

"Course she can go. Princess, get your coat. Don't keep the man waiting."

He winked at me as I passed him in the doorway.

I kept walking.

Thatcher drove three blocks and pulled into the empty lot of a closed hardware store.

He turned off the engine.

Dena sat in the back seat with her arms around herself.

"Your mother didn't send you," I said.

"No. I knocked because you were nine minutes late." He turned in his seat. "Now somebody tell me what's going on."

So I told him.

All of it.

I skipped the orphanage and the diner and the seventeen years.

I gave him the part he could check.

His mother's garden, a wedding that hadn't happened yet.

The white car on Hope Street.

The voice from the passenger window.

He didn't interrupt.

He didn't laugh.

When I stopped, the windows had fogged.

He looked in the rearview mirror at my sister.

"Is it true?"

Dena nodded.

"Say it."

"It's true," she said. "I drove. He was in the passenger seat. He had a policy on her."

Thatcher sat with his hands on the wheel for a long time.

"What bakery?" he said finally.

That wasn't what I'd expected.

"The one on our corner. Blue awning. On Hope Street."

"With the old man who does the almond croissants on Tuesdays only."

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