Chapter 19: No Forms

Judith stood up when we got out of the van.

She wiped her face with the heel of her hand, and it left a smear of mascara across her cheekbone.

"I'm not here to fight," she said.

Daniel's truck pulled up behind us. He got out and stood by the fender and didn't come closer.

"Your aunt told me," Judith said to him. "About the letter. Four years, and he wrote to you, and I never knew."

"Mom."

"I only want to know one thing." Her voice shook. "Did he hate me?"

"No," Daniel said. "He told me to be gentle with you."

She pressed her lips together, hard.

Then she looked at me, at the bundle on Kate's shoulder.

"May I hold her?" she said. "Once. I won't say a word."

I thought about the freezing apartment she'd told the county about, and the form, and four minutes.

I thought about her hands on my back through labor.

"No," I said.

She nodded slowly.

"Not tonight," I said. "You can ask me again when you've said it to everyone you said the other thing to."

"Everyone."

"The sixty-one. The church. Ben." I kept my voice level. "Out loud, in a room, with your own mouth."

Judith looked at her shoes.

"All right," she said. It was hardly a sound.

She walked to her car, an old woman in a good coat, and did not look back.

Kate turned back to me.

"I have a bottle in the fridge and the pamphlet on the counter," she said to me. "I can keep a baby alive for one night."

"Kate."

"Don't Kate me." She turned her shoulder so the baby was out of reach. "Go on. I saw that kitchen. Everybody at the lake saw that kitchen."

I looked at Daniel.