The Mole in His Bed novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Night Before

Neil's POV

On the night before the memorial, Winnie Tallant cooked for six people and set the table for three.

The Falls Road apartment had a kitchen the size of a closet, and she had used every burner.

I sat at the end of the table with my left arm strapped across my chest.

She put a plate down in front of me, hard, with a pork chop on it.

She didn't look at me.

"Thank you, Mrs. Tallant," I said.

Nothing.

She passed the salt to Cora across me, and never once met my eyes.

"Mom," Cora said.

"I'm eating."

"He took a bullet for you."

"I've said thank you to the doctors," Winnie said. "I'll say it to him when he's said it to me."

"Said what?" I asked.

She finally lifted her eyes.

They were gray, and they were exactly Cora's.

"Her name," she said. "In my kitchen, on my door, every month for five years. Not once."

"Mrs. Tallant..."

"Eat your chop."

I ate it.

When the plates were cleared, a marshal knocked and took her across the hall to the second apartment.

At the door she turned and looked at me for one long moment.

"You paid in new bills, folded in thirds," she said. "Next time use old ones. Somebody is always watching a mother's mailbox."

She went out.

Cora stood at the sink with her back to me, running water over a plate that was already clean.

I sat down at the table and took out the pad Judith had given me, and wrote my statement for the department.

It said what I had done and for how long, and it said no one else had known.

I wrote it out twice, because my hand kept shaking.

"You don't have to stay," Cora said, without turning around.

"I know."

"The marshal is outside. Judith is two blocks away."

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