He Sat Me by the Warming Racks, So I Pulled the Funding novel · Chapter 9 of 24

Chapter 9: Lowell's POV

Lowell's POV

Her kitchen was small, and everything in it had belonged to someone else.

The table had a crack down the middle, mended with a strip of tape.

There were ceramic canisters in a row, and on the windowsill a pot of dead African violets she had not been able to throw out.

Maureen filled a kettle without being asked, because her hands needed something to do.

She still wore my coat.

I sat with the file on my knees and waited, and I did not know how to begin.

Three years is a long time to carry a folder.

Anne had kept it in the bottom drawer of her desk at home, under the tax returns.

It was a manila envelope with a rubber band around it.

I found it the week after the funeral, when I went through her papers.

On the front, in her small, upright hand, she had written: Maureen Tolbert. Ask Lowell to give her this if she ever comes back to us.

I had not known the name.

I had looked it up.

I found a firm on Water Street and a husband on my own medical staff.

For three years I kept the envelope in my safe and did not act.

"You said you've wanted to tell me something for a long time," Maureen said, setting two mugs on the table. "Tell me."

"I thought you refused her."

She stopped with her hand on the chair.

"Refused who?"

"My wife. Anne was your dean the year you left. She believed you were the best student she'd taught in twenty years. She said that more than once."

Maureen sat down.

"She held a place for you," I said. "When you didn't come back after your mother's illness, she sent letters. She kept sending them for three years. And Anne told me, near the end, that you had written back each time and said no."

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