Chapter 20: The Empty House

I went to Fairmont alone, in the Corolla, on Wednesday afternoon.

Keir had wanted to drive me.

I told him he could watch the street from Dot's window, and he said that was a joke, and I said it wasn't.

He let me go. That was how I knew I could keep him.

The front door was unlocked.

The hall was bare, with the pale square on the wall where the clock had been.

Bernadette sat in the kitchen at a card table, with one folding chair and a pot of tea.

The long oak table was gone, and the good dishes, and the refrigerator magnets.

There was a single suitcase by the back door.

"Sit," she said. "There's a stool."

It was the step stool from under the sink.

I sat on it, and my knees came up nearly to my chin.

She poured me tea, and I did not drink it.

"My sister has a condo in Sarasota," Bernadette said. "I leave on the first."

She stirred her tea.

"Brittany won't speak to me. Stanton won't answer. The church has found another woman to run the bake sale."

"I heard."

"You came anyway."

"You said you had something to say."

She turned her cup in her hands.

Her nails were bare. I had never seen them without polish.

"I was widowed at fifty," she said. "My husband's money went to his lawyers and his first family."

She set the cup down.

"I had a house with a mortgage, two children, and a stepson who would not speak to me."

"That's not what I came to hear."

"It's the only thing I have." She looked up.

"When your father died, I read the number in the paper. I sat in this kitchen, and I wasn't afraid of the bank for the first time in my life."