Chapter 18: What He Owes

I took him to the back porch, where the kitchen window looked out on us.

"Rowan will watch," I said. "She doesn't blink."

"That's fine," my father said.

He stood against the rail with his arms at his sides.

He looked smaller in the daylight, and older.

His beard needed trimming, and there was a long scrape down his wrist from the cot in the cold store.

"I'll say it plainly," he said. "You can stop me whenever you want."

"I might."

"Good."

He took a breath.

"I decided in about a minute. Clara was on Hester's table, and your mother was crying, and you were in the next basket, screaming."

He swallowed.

"I looked at the two of you and I did the arithmetic."

"What arithmetic?"

"That you'd survive it."

The air on the porch felt very still.

"I've had twelve years to find a better reason," he said. "I haven't. I'm not going to hand you one now."

"That's all?"

"There's more, but none of it is an excuse." He rubbed his thumb along the ring. "I came to your door every night."

"I thought you were checking the clasp."

"I was. And then I stood there and listened to you breathe."

His voice roughened.

"You'd shiver in your sleep. I told myself it was the draft. I fixed the window twice."

"You fixed the window."

"I did."

I laughed once, a short ugly sound.

"You fixed the window, and you never took the chain off."

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because every time I thought about it, I thought about her," he said. "And then I fixed the window."

He didn't flinch from my face, and I made myself keep looking.

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