Next Time Away novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Reinstated

"Then what did you want?" I said.

Dagny turned from the sign.

"My husband was thirty-six years old," she said.

"I know."

"He wanted one thing, ever. A house on the water, with a fire, where his girl could grow up."

"I know."

"He worked the ice and the docks and two other jobs for it. And Soren got it handed to him."

Her voice was flat now, with no sugar in it.

"Your grandmother gave it to you, and you gave it to him. He sat in front of that fireplace for two years after what he did."

"And ate dinner," I said.

"Like a man with nothing on his conscience."

"So you took his dinner."

"I made him pay for it. Every Christmas. Every Sunday."

She picked up a suitcase.

"I wanted him to sit by that fire in a green sweater, with my child, and not enjoy one minute of it."

"And you used Elsie to do it."

"She was the point."

"No, Dagny," I said. "She was the leash."

She looked at me.

For one second there was something in her eyes that might have been shame.

Then she carried her suitcase out past me and down the stairs.

I followed with the second one.

In the kitchen, Elsie sat at the table with a mug of cocoa and three marshmallows.

Jonas stood at the stove with his back to us.

"Elsie," Dagny said. "Coat."

Elsie put down the mug.

She came to me first.

I knelt, took my grandmother's gray wool hat off the hook by the door and pulled it down over her ears.

"It's cold in the van," I said. "Keep this on."

"Is it yours?"

"It was my grandmother's. It's yours now."

"Are you mad at Mommy?"

"I'm mad at what she did," I said. "Not at you. You didn't do anything wrong. You never did."

"Can I still come see Greta?"

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