She Heard Nothing novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Bench Behind the Shed

At noon on Wednesday, the bench behind the equipment shed had Marilyn on it.

She sat at the very end, with her purse beside her and her coat buttoned to the neck.

The grass around her had not been mowed.

I stopped ten feet away.

Down the slope, Lottie stood by the same tree she had used before and gave me a large, obvious thumbs-up.

"You can sit," Marilyn said. "Or I can stand. I'd rather you pick."

"I'll stand."

"All right."

She did not stand either.

She sat with her hands in her lap, and looked at them, and then at me.

"You found the photograph."

"Yes."

"I took it with a camera I bought for it. The nurses let me stay an hour." Her voice was quiet and rough. "I didn't lie about that. I lied about the rest of it, in the dean's office, because I was afraid, and it was a coward's thing to do."

"You said you lost a baby."

"I said I lost you." She gave a short breath that was not a laugh. "I was saying the truest thing I could think of, in the wrong words."

I did not say anything.

The wind pushed a paper cup across the grass.

"You asked me in the tent why I never opened the car door," Marilyn said. "I gave you a speech. It was true, but it wasn't the answer."

"What's the answer?"

"If I opened it, you would look at me."

She said it plainly.

"For twenty years I knew the exact worst thing a person could think of me, and I knew that I'd earned it. I could live with that as long as it was an idea. I couldn't live with it in your face."

"That's why."

"That's why. Not Albert. Not the money. Albert and the money were what I said so I wouldn't have to say that."

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