She Heard Nothing novel · Chapter 14 of 24
Chapter 14: The Long Table
"Marilyn," Albert said. "That's enough."
His voice was not loud, but the tent was quiet and it carried to the front.
Marilyn lowered the glass.
"Albert, sit down. You're tired. We'll talk in the car."
"I'm done sitting in the car with you."
Sixty parents turned their heads toward him, and then toward me, and then back to the microphone.
"My wife says a young woman invented a story to get close to us," Albert said. "I'd like to tell you the rest of it, because I just heard it."
"Albert."
"A girl was driven half out of her mind this week on that field. My daughter did it, with a phone. My wife sat in a car at the gate and listened to every minute."
A woman at the next table put her hand over her mouth.
"I have it on a recording," Albert said. "She had the car door open on Wednesday while this girl was being called a liar in front of four hundred people. And she shut it."
Marilyn's face did not move.
She set the glass down on the table beside the microphone, very carefully, so that it made no sound.
"Fine," she said.
She turned, at last, and looked straight down the tent at me.
I stood up.
I had not planned to, but my legs did it, and Lottie stood up beside me.
"You want to know why," Marilyn said to the whole tent. "Everyone wants to know why. I'll tell you."
Nobody in the tent moved.
"I was twenty-five," Marilyn said. "My father had told me that if I came home pregnant, I would not come home."
She said it evenly.
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