Chapter 11: Terms

He didn't move.

The rain ran off the porch roof behind him in a sheet.

"How long?" he asked.

"Since the first night."

He closed his eyes.

"My lawyer has had your real name in a sealed envelope since five the next morning," I said. "If anything happens to me, it goes to the police."

He opened them again and looked at me like he'd never seen me before.

Then, slowly, respect came into his face.

"And you still let me drive your son to school."

"I'd rather know where you are than wonder."

The porch light buzzed.

Somewhere upstairs, the sitter's chair creaked.

"Inside," I said. "I'm not doing this on the porch."

I paid the sitter and sent her home with an umbrella.

Then I stood in my kitchen in my wet black dress.

He stood by the door with his hands at his sides, and I let him have it.

"You let a five-year-old call you a fake name."

"Yes."

"You let him tell his whole class the flying man lives in our coach house."

"Do you know what he calls you? 'Abe Abbott who flew.'"

He flinched.

"You slept in my bed with a fake name."

"You slept with me knowing the real one."

"I know." I folded my arms. "That's my sin. I'll carry it. I'm asking about yours."

He was quiet for a long moment.

Then he pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down in it, heavily.

"My name is Abram James Cruger," he said.

"I'm thirty-six. I own Cruger Arms."

"We make rifles and drones and we sell them to governments."

"Some of what I sold ended up in places it shouldn't have, and I told myself that wasn't my problem."

He said it straight, to my face, without looking away.

"Four months ago I was supposed to get into my car in Wilmette at seven in the morning."

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