Chapter 20: The Porch

I told Odette about the text in the van.

She didn't answer until we pulled into her drive.

"I won't open the door," she said.

"You don't have to."

"I mean I can't." She stared at her hands. "If I see her face I'll do something that ends with me in a cell and her still breathing."

"Then stay in your room."

"And you?"

"I don't know yet."

At ten past one, a pair of headlights slid across the kitchen wall.

I was sitting at the table in the dark with a cup of tea I hadn't touched.

Luke sat across from me.

Bella had gone to sleep in the yellow room, in the crib's shadow, with her shoes still on.

A car door shut outside.

Footsteps came slowly up the porch steps.

Then there was a long pause.

Then a knock, soft, three times.

Odette appeared in the hall in her robe, with her hair loose.

She stood at the far end of the kitchen, her back flat to the wall.

The knock came again.

"Odette," Brenda's voice said through the wood. "Please."

Odette didn't move.

"I know you're there. I can see the light."

Odette's mouth was a thin line.

"I'm not here to fight. I'm not here for forgiveness. I only want to say it to your face once, and then I'll never come to your door again."

Silence.

I looked at Odette.

She shook her head.

She was shaking so hard the sash of her robe trembled.

I stood.

"Ginny," Luke said.

"I'll open it."

"You don't have to."

"Yes," I said, "I do."

I went down the hall and turned the lock.

I opened the door, but not the screen.

Brenda stood on the porch in the church blouse she'd worn all day, with her hair coming loose and her purse hanging from her wrist.

She looked small.

She looked like a woman I might have passed at the grocery store.

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