Chapter 16: Said Out Loud

Harlan stood on the sidewalk with his hat in his hand and waited for me to come to the fence.

I took my time.

I signed out my last two children.

I got Eli from the aide and walked down the path with the carrier on my chest.

The parents had stopped pretending to look at their phones.

"Mrs. Stallworth," Harlan said.

"Mr. Stallworth."

He had never called me anything but Emme.

"I came to say something, and I'd like to say it before these folks."

"Then say it."

He turned toward the line of cars, and he spoke up, the way he did when he called cattle across a field.

"Last Tuesday I stood at her classroom door and told this girl to bring her baby to my lawyer's office or the sheriff would come for him."

Nobody coughed.

"Today my lawyer offered her more money than most of you will see, to keep her mouth shut about me."

His jaw worked.

"She turned it down. She turned it down in front of you, and she was right to."

"Mr. Stallworth," I said.

"I'm not done." He looked at me. "I called you a liar at my own table. You weren't one."

"No, sir. I wasn't."

"I took a doctor's word and swabbed your old friend and my own boy. I put you in a chair and I said, prove it."

He swallowed.

"You proved it, with your own money and your own lab, in a week."

"I've been proving things my whole life, and I never did it that fast."

Somebody laughed, and stopped, because he hadn't meant it to be funny.

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