Chapter 14: The Ladder, Mother

The van left at 9:20 with nobody in the back.

Quist left last.

He stood at the gate with the clinic packet in his hand, and my mother gave him a look I had never seen on her in thirty-four years.

"Tell my husband I'm not coming home to cook," she said.

"Ingrid, he'll want to know where you'll be."

"Then he can ask me."

Joan walked her through the roll door like a guest of state.

My mother stopped inside the Tern bay.

She saw the cradle, the cot, and the crew mug in her younger son's hands.

"Kit," she said.

He stood up so fast the cot rolled.

"Mom."

She crossed the floor and took his face in both her hands.

She turned it left, then right, the way she did when he was nine and had come home from a fight.

"You're thin," she said. "You're so thin."

"I'm okay."

"You're not okay. Your father put a bandage on a hand with nothing wrong with it." Her voice cracked on the last word. "Why would he do that?"

"So you'd see a hurt boy and not ask questions."

"And I didn't."

"No."

"I didn't ask one question." She let go of his face. "Not one. I stood in that house for a week and I didn't ask my own son one question."

Kit didn't answer.

I stood by the cradle with my hands in my jacket pockets.

She turned and looked at me.

"Emmett."

"Mom."

"On the ops floor, you said nothing. I hit you in front of forty people, and you didn't say one word to stop me."

"No."

"Why not?"

"You wouldn't have heard it."

She flinched.

It was a small movement, but it went all the way down her body.

"No," she said. "I wouldn't have."

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