Chapter 4: One Take

By the next Friday there were two news vans parked outside Bev's Diner, and my mother had turned the sign to Closed.

She hadn't closed in thirty-one years, not even the day my father died.

I sat at the counter in my old high school sweatshirt with a cup of tea going cold in front of me.

My body still expected my daughter.

Nobody had told it.

My mother put her phone down in front of me, face up.

"Read it," she said. "Then tell me if I'm allowed to go out there with the coffee pot."

Dalton had posted at seven that morning.

It was a photo of the two of us from our wedding, and under it he had written three paragraphs.

He said he was heartbroken.

He said he had tried to carry me out himself and that I wouldn't let him.

He said grief makes people say terrible things, and he would not answer them.

It already had a hundred thousand likes.

The top comment said, Poor man. Imagine losing a child and having a wife who goes on TV to blame you.

I hadn't gone on TV.

I hadn't said a word to anyone except a nurse and my mother.

"He never tried to carry me," I said.

"I know."

"He walked away to take a call. Two hundred people watched him."

"I know, baby."

"And now they think I'm lying about it."

My mother took the phone back and set it down.

Six regulars sat in their booths along the wall, the ones who had come in anyway.

My mother had given them free pie, and none of them had touched it.

A trucker at the end of the counter cleared his throat.

"Hallie, I'm sorry to say this. But if you don't say something, that's the only story out there."