She Discovered Too Late novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: Nine Days on the Floor

The housekeeper called our uncle on the ninth day.

She stood in the front hall of Alder Road with the phone against her chest.

She told him that Ms. Ellingham had not left my old bedroom since Sunday.

The tray outside the door had not been touched.

I had been standing in that room for those nine days, because it was where she was.

She lay on the bare floor where the gym mats used to be, with her coat over her.

Her face was to the wall, and her hair had come loose.

She had not changed her shirt.

The seed packet lay on the floorboards next to her hand.

I had talked to her the whole time.

I had said her name. I had said what Arlene would say.

I had told her what I thought about people who skipped meals.

None of it reached her.

Our uncle came up the stairs slowly, with the housekeeper behind him.

He stopped in the doorway with one hand on the frame.

"Miriam," he said.

She did not turn.

He lowered himself onto the floor beside her, the old man in his dark coat, and I heard his knees crack.

He sat there for a while.

"I brought tea," he said. "It's the cheap kind. You used to like it."

"I'm not hungry, Uncle."

"I know."

"I did everything he asked."

Her voice was flat and small and very tired.

"I signed the building. I took him to the hill. I'm trying to find the next thing, and there isn't one."

"There's the company," our uncle said.

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