Chapter 24: Two Chairs

I told Hattie to clear the house, and she did it in twenty minutes.

She had sixty-one guests out the door, the jar locked in my hall closet and the last checks stacked on the stairs.

At the end she stopped in front of Amber on the porch and looked her up and down.

"If you hurt her, I'll know where you live," Hattie said.

"I know," Amber said.

"Good."

Hattie squeezed my arm, mouthed call me, and went down the steps.

I led Amber into the study.

The shelves were full again, every spine in its place.

My reading chair stood in the corner under the lamp.

Rhys had carried in a second chair from the kitchen, the one Dalton picked for my table, and he set it facing mine.

Then he left, and he closed the door.

Amber stood in the middle of the rug with her hands empty.

"You can sit," I said.

She sat on the kitchen chair with her knees together.

I sat in the reading chair.

Neither of us spoke for what felt like a long time.

"I'm not going to apologize again," Amber said finally. "I did it on camera. It's not a thing I can say twice."

"All right."

"I came to give you something."

She took a small square of glossy paper from her coat pocket.

It was a school photograph, the cardboard kind, with a blue mottled background.

A girl of about ten looked out of it with a gap in her teeth and her hair in a crooked braid.

"That's me," Amber said. "Fourth grade."

She swallowed.

"He had eleven of you in his desk. I looked in every drawer and folder in that house, and there's not one of me."

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