Chapter 22: The Back of the Church

I let her in for two minutes, with the officer standing at her elbow.

My mother stopped at the foot of the bed in her cuffs.

She looked at the man under the sheet for a long time.

"He looks like himself," she said.

"Yes."

"I was so angry at him. I stayed angry for thirty years. I'm not sure what I did with all of it."

"You gave it to me."

She did not argue.

She put her bound hands on the blanket, over his feet, and bent her head.

When she lifted it, there were tears on her face, and I did not feel anything move.

"I'm sorry I wrote that on the envelopes," she said.

"You wrote it on every one."

"I was twenty-seven and I wanted him to hurt." Her voice cracked. "I never meant for it to land on you."

"It landed on me for twenty-nine years."

She nodded once.

The officer touched her sleeve, and she let him lead her out.

I did not follow her with my eyes.

Three days later, they buried my father from the big stone church on Euclid Avenue.

It was a gray morning, and the pews were full to the walls.

The board sat in the front rows, in black, with their hands folded.

Employees filled the side aisles and stood three deep along the back.

The mayor came, and a senator, and a woman who said she had been Bernard's second-grade teacher.

I sat in the first pew with Zane beside me, and his knee pressed against mine the whole hour.

At the door, an usher in a dark suit bent down to my shoulder.

"Madam Chair," he whispered. "The Fenns are on the steps."

I turned my head.

Through the open doors, I could see them at the bottom of the stairs in the rain.

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