Chapter 15: The Wound

It was past midnight when I came out of the bedroom and found Anson in the kitchen, taping a box shut.

Three more boxes stood by the door.

"What are you doing?"

"The locks get changed at noon," he said. "My father's lawyer called. I have until then."

"You said Friday."

"It's Friday, Jo."

He ran the tape across the cardboard in one hard line.

I had not seen him angry yet.

Since the doctor's study, he had not said a word about his father's name on that check.

"Say it," I said.

"Say what?"

"Whatever you've been carrying since the doctor's house. You've been packing it into boxes for two hours."

He put down the tape.

"I lived on his money for three years," he said. "The roof, the car, the lake house. I ate his food while he paid for your door."

"You didn't know."

"I didn't ask."

His voice was very low.

"There's something else, and it's worse, so let me finish."

I folded my arms and waited.

"The eighth Sunday, your mother shut the door in my face, and I walked back to my car."

"Then I never went again."

"You wrote."

"I wrote," he said. "I mailed thirty-six letters, because a letter is easy. I told myself you'd told her to send me away."

"And what did you really think?"

"That you were behind that door, locked in, and I could have kicked it in," Anson said.

"Some part of me knew it, Jo."

"I got in my car anyway, because the other thing was easier to believe."

He looked straight at me.

"I blamed you for staying engaged eight days. I took three years to come back."

The kitchen was so quiet that I could hear the refrigerator humming.

Nobody had ever handed me a thing like that.

Everyone else had handed me a lie about myself.

"You should have kicked it in," I said.

"Yes."

"I wanted you to. Every night, I lay there and listened for the gravel."

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