The Mole in His Bed novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Earn It

On Sunday at six o'clock, Neil knocked on my mother's door in Dundalk.

He had a bag of groceries in his good arm and a brown envelope under the sling.

The cardboard was gone from the kitchen window.

There was new glass in it, and the putty was still soft at the corners.

"You fixed the pane," I said, when I opened the door.

"On Saturday night. The super let me up."

"At night?"

"I couldn't sleep," Neil said.

Winnie stood behind me with a dish towel over one shoulder.

She looked at the groceries, and then at the envelope.

"Come in and wipe your feet," she said.

He wiped them twice.

We ate in her tiny kitchen at her tiny table, with a roast chicken and a pot of green beans.

For the first twenty minutes nobody said much.

Neil ate everything she gave him.

When his plate was empty, Winnie put down her fork.

"Now," she said.

"Mrs. Tallant."

"I told you what I wanted. In the Falls Road kitchen, a week ago. I want it said."

Neil laid his napkin beside his plate.

He turned in his chair to face her, and for the first time since the pier he did not look at me.

"I knew she was innocent from the forty-first day," he said. "You were the one person in Baltimore I could have told, and I told you nothing."

"Go on."

"I sat in a car across from your window on Sundays, and I watched the light, and I thought, tomorrow."

"Then I'd think of the phone she tapped and the car behind me, and I'd drive home a coward again."

His voice was steady. His hands weren't.

"I should have knocked. I should have said, Winnie, Cora is alive. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I made you bury her alone."

"You said her name," my mother said.

"Cora."

"Say it again."

"Cora," he said. "Cora Tallant."

Winnie nodded slowly.

She stood and went to the sink and stood there with her back to him, running water over a clean plate.

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