Chapter 11: Eighteen Years

Dinah's mother cleaned the cut with warm water and closed it with three white strips from a drugstore box.

"It needs stitches," she said. "You know it needs stitches."

"It'll scar," Dinah said. "Good. Then people will be able to tell us apart."

"Don't be smart with me, Dinah Fenner."

"Yes, Mom."

She kissed the top of Dinah's head and took her husband by the sleeve.

"We'll be upstairs," she said, "listening to nothing."

The stairs creaked twice, and a door shut.

That left the two of us in a yellow kitchen at one in the morning, with the kettle starting to shriek.

I poured tea into two chipped mugs.

Dinah held hers with both hands and didn't drink.

For a long time neither of us said anything, and I tried to find the first sentence out of eighteen years.

"You used to hold my hand on the stairs," I said finally.

"At the home. You said the dark was only for babies."

"I was lying. I was terrified."

"I know. I could feel you shaking."

She looked at her mug.

"I wrote you every week for nine years," I said. "Until your last letter said Stop writing."

"I know."

"I wrote you every year after that, too. On your birthday."

My throat went tight.

"I never mailed them. There was a drawer of them at the Ellinghams'."

"Adelaide burned them. I'm sorry."

"How do you know?"

"Because she read all of yours," Dinah said quietly.

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