The Abandoned Wife novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Pickles

Emil Eckstein stood in my doorway at six that evening.

He had a cardboard box on one hip and a mason jar in his other hand.

He was wet to the knees, he hadn't shaved, and he looked at my apartment.

"It's very clean," he said.

"It's a normal amount of clean."

"There's one chair."

"I like one chair."

"Who sits on it?"

"Me. On Sundays."

He nodded gravely and handed me the jar.

Inside, a dozen green pickles floated in cloudy brine.

"My mother says you eat them like a squirrel," he said.

"She says the dill is from her garden and the garlic is from spite."

I laughed.

It came out of me before I could stop it, a rusty, startled sound, and I put my hand over my mouth.

He watched me do it, and his expression went quiet and pleased.

"Boots," I said, to cover it. "Take them off. This floor cost more than your truck."

"My truck doesn't cost anything. It's held together by prayer."

He sat on the arm of my one chair and unlaced them.

I set the box on the glass table and lifted the lid.

He had done everything I asked, and more.

There was my chart from Pell County, a thick stack of it, with the plastic wristband stapled to the first page.

JANE DOE had been crossed out in blue ink, and under it, in his messy hand, SALTER, DARA.

There were the X-rays of my left leg in a long brown envelope, dated March 14, with the first breaks marked in red.

There was the paramedic's run report.

At the bottom, folded in thirds, was a notarized statement on cream paper.

It said, in four lines, that Dr. Emil J. Eckstein had treated a woman who gave her name as Dara Salter.

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