The Wife They Burned novel · Chapter 24 of 32

Chapter 24: Second Night

"Alone," I said.

"His word."

"He signed the report that called my daughter's death an accident. He's not getting alone."

Abel turned the phone over in his hand.

"If the detective's parked in my road, he drives past," he said. "He's been a fire marshal for thirty years. He'll see her car from the corner."

"Then I'll be there."

"Ada."

"I'm not the detective. I'm the mother. If he wants to say it, he can say it to me."

Abel looked at me for a long moment.

Then he nodded once.

"I'll tell her it's happening," he said. "Not where."

"She'll be furious."

"She's always furious. It's how she shows affection."

Joy wheeled her chair in close and put her hand flat on the table between us.

"Friday," she said. "Before your Saturday."

"What about Friday?"

Joy took off her red glasses and looked at me.

"My love. What's the date Friday?"

I had to count on my fingers.

Saturday was the twenty-fourth of January.

"It's your birthday Saturday," Joy said. "And you'll be sitting across from that man. So we're doing it Friday. Don't argue with a woman in a wheelchair."

I hadn't thought about my birthday once.

Last year, Junie had made me a crown out of a cereal box and orange tissue paper.

She'd made me wear it to dinner at Highmoor.

Marshall's mother had asked me to take it off before the soup.

On Friday night, the third floor of the nurses' residence threw me a party.

The father from Maine made a cake from a box, in a kitchen that had one working burner.

It came out lopsided, with a crater in the middle.

The boy from room seven filled the crater with orange sprinkles and named it Mount Ada.

"You can't name a cake after a person," his mother said.

"I can if it looks like her."

"How does it look like me?"

He studied the cake and then me.

"It got knocked down and it's still a cake," he said.

Nobody said anything for a second.

Then Joy blew her nose very loudly.

They sang, badly, in four different keys.

The night man and his wife brought a pie.

The NICU parents from room three gave me a card their twins had signed with two tiny handprints.

Abel stood against the wall with Sarge, eating cake off a paper towel and watching me.

At nine he pushed off the wall.

"I'm taking her," he told Joy.

"Take her," Joy said. "Bring her back with her hair down."

"She's not a library book," I said.

"Overdue," Joy said, and went back to her pie.

His house was cold when we got there.

He lit the stove before he took his jacket off.

Then he went to the hall closet and came back with a bedsheet, and stood holding it, looking unsure.

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