Chapter 23: The Witness

My mother had a plan, and she had made it in the dark while the rest of us were asleep.

I understood that when I walked into room 412 at seven.

A woman I did not know sat by the window with a leather satchel on her knees.

"Miles's lawyer," my mother said from the pillows. "I rang him at four. He rang her."

"Mom, you should be resting."

"I will be, soon enough. Sit down, Clara. You too, Tom."

My father sat on the radiator cover.

I sat on the end of the bed.

The lawyer took a stamp and a stack of paper out of her satchel.

She laid them on the tray table in front of my mother.

My mother signed four pages, slowly, in a hand that shook.

The lawyer stamped each page and signed under it.

"It's called a sworn statement," my mother said. "Lydia rang me in August."

"She told me everything over the telephone, in order. I wrote it down that night."

"I put down who, and when, and what he paid, and what he made her sign."

"Lydia's agreement binds Lydia," the lawyer said to me, quietly.

"It can't bind a witness she told, who isn't part of the contract."

"A dying witness," my mother said, "who nobody can sue."

I looked at her.

I had spent twenty-four years believing I knew exactly who she was.

She smiled at me with my own mouth.

"I couldn't do much for either of you when you were small," she said. "Let me do this."

At ten past eight there was a knock at the door.

He did not wait for an answer.

Miles's father came in with his coat over his arm.

He stood a pace inside the room and took in the lawyer, my father and me.

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