Chapter 12: Fire Me

We got to Fifth Street at eleven-forty.

Marshall's landlady was standing in the doorway of the bakery with a rolling pin in one hand and a dish towel over her shoulder.

She was seventy-four and four foot eleven, and she looked at us calmly.

"She's out the back," she said. "Eat something, both of you. You look worn out."

"Where is she?" I said.

"In the walk-in cooler, with a cinnamon roll. Nobody looks in my cooler."

I laughed, a high shaking laugh that almost turned into the other thing.

Marshall went around the side to the alley.

I stayed at the counter, because I wanted to see the judge's face.

He came at noon exactly, in a charcoal overcoat, alone, with a leather glove in each hand.

The bakery had nine customers in it.

They went quiet when the man who had sentenced their cousins walked in.

"Mrs. Lindemann," he said, and his face didn't change at all. "I was told I'd find you."

"Judge."

"I'm here for the young woman. She needs medical supervision."

"Nobody here but the bread," said the landlady, and set the rolling pin on the counter with a clack.

He ignored her.

"Cora, my dear. This is a family matter. We've been generous with you. We pay for your mother's room, and we'd hate for that to be disrupted."

The room waited.

I heard someone at the back put down a coffee cup.

I had held my voice flat for a week, in a house, on a lawn, at a dinner table.

I let it go loose.

"You've paid for it for fourteen weeks," I said. "The foundation cut her off the day I filed, and Grady restored it the day I remarried him."

His glove stopped moving.

"That's something you did to me," I went on. "It isn't something you gave me."