Chapter 23: Evidence

Phoebe's POV

My mother set a metal trash bin on her porch on Sunday afternoon and told me to bring the box.

I had picked it up from the house in German Village with a lawyer and a locksmith standing by.

It was the white box with the gold ribbon, still tied.

I had not opened it since the night I closed the lid.

"You don't have to do this," I said.

"Yes, I do," my mother said. "I'm sixty-three. I've earned a bonfire."

She lifted the lid.

The green satin lay in its tissue, with the tag turned up. Size 6, Maternity.

She held it by the straps and shook it out in the November light.

It looked smaller than I remembered, and cheaper.

"The color's wrong," my mother said. "Mine was darker. He couldn't even get that right."

She laid it in the bin, and the box on top, and the tissue paper, and the ribbon.

Then she took a long kitchen match out of her cardigan pocket.

Across the street the woman with the newspaper had come out on her porch, in her robe, with a mug.

She had been coming out every morning since Monday.

My mother raised her voice, though she didn't have to.

"Come watch. You've waited long enough."

"I thought you'd never ask," the woman called back.

She crossed the street in her slippers.

By the time the match was struck, three more neighbors had drifted onto the lawn, and a man two doors down had brought a folding chair.

My mother touched the flame to the tissue.

It caught.

The satin curled, shrank and hissed, and a thin black smoke went up past the porch light.