Chapter 15: The Porch Swing

I went back to the house on Tuesday morning with Dot and her truck.

It was the first time I had been inside since the party, and it smelled like Beau's coffee and nothing else.

Marilyn was waiting on the front porch swing.

She wore the same cream cardigan and her church pearls, and her handbag sat on her knees with both hands folded over it.

Her Buick was parked across the end of the driveway, where the truck couldn't get past.

"Good morning, Marlo," she said.

"Move your car, Marilyn."

"We need to talk before you take one thing out of that house."

"We can talk while I take it."

I went past her and unlocked the door.

Dot went in behind me with an armful of flattened boxes, and stood in the hall like a bouncer.

Marilyn followed us through the rooms.

I took my console case from the studio, and my good headphones, and my father's old tool roll from the garage shelf.

She talked the whole time, in her soft church voice, and I let it run.

"A marriage isn't a feeling, honey. It's a thing you carry."

I carried a box of cables to the truck.

"I carried Beau's father for twenty-two years, and I never once embarrassed him in front of people."

I carried the next box.

"You shamed my son in front of five hundred people, and his mother, and God."

"He did that himself," I said. "I read what was on the page."

"You humiliated him on a livestream."

"He wrote the transfer. I only sent it to him in a box."

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