The Tutor and the Senator's Widow novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: July 12

"I was at the lake house," Eleanor said. "Alone."

Marion waited.

"It's on Smith Mountain Lake. Alden's father built it. I went the second week of July because I couldn't stand the city." She pressed her fingers to her eyes. "I sat on the dock for three days and talked to nobody."

"Did you use a computer?"

"I don't own one. I use my phone for email, and only for email."

"Was there a signal?"

"Barely. There was no internet at all. The cable company cut the line in June, because nobody was paying the bill."

"Good," Marion said. "That's a fact somebody can check."

"Can you prove I wasn't there?"

"You don't have to prove it. They have to prove you were." She wrote on her pad. "A login leaves an address behind. The state can see which building it came from. I can't. A lawyer or an investigator has to ask for it."

"Which means someone has to believe me first."

"Which means," Marion said, "that you keep going to class, keep quiet, and keep every piece of paper your stepsons hand you."

She put her pencil down.

"And you let the girl help you," she added, nodding at me. "She's got a good head. She looked at that table the way I'd look at a snake."

I did not know whether to be flattered or insulted.

"I'm twenty-two," I said.

"That's what I said. A good head."

At the door she gave Eleanor a pie plate with half the lemon pie in it, wrapped in foil.

"Eat something," she said. "People think best on lemon."

Eleanor drove.

She drove for twenty minutes without speaking, down Broad Street and across the river, and when I looked up we were on Floyd Avenue.

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