They Never Loved Me. Now I Don't Remember Them. novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Stay

Devin's POV

Pearl ran the planning meeting at her kitchen table like a deposition.

She had a legal pad, a pot of coffee and a pencil behind each ear.

"I typed for the county prosecutor for thirty-four years," she said. "I know which investigators answer their phones. One of them owes me a favor from a trial in 2009."

"What kind of favor?" Lydia asked.

"I kept a certain transcript sealed." Pearl wrote something. "I've asked her to be a guest at the party. A plus-one, in a nice dress, standing near the door."

"And a deputy?"

"The one who isn't Irene's. There are two. He drank her cider at Christmas and he won't forget who gave it to him."

I put the lab page and the clinic letter on the table.

"This is what we have," I said. "It's enough for a detective to open a file. It isn't enough to put anyone in cuffs on Saturday."

"No," Pearl said. "That takes the thing we don't have."

"What's that?"

"Irene saying it out loud." Pearl took off her glasses. "In front of two hundred people. She's built her whole life on being the kindest woman in the room. She has to hear herself fail at it."

Lydia was turning the cap of a pen between her fingers.

"I can make her say it," she said.

"How?"

"I know exactly what she wants me to forget."

Pearl looked at her for a long moment and then nodded, once.

"Your father," she said. "If Gordon stands, it's over. If he doesn't, we still have you."

"Dad will stand," Lydia said. "He gave me the key."

I wanted to believe her.

I looked at Pearl, and Pearl looked at me, and neither of us said what we thought.

Irene came to the hospital on Thursday night.

I was at the nurses' station finishing a chart when I heard the heels in the corridor.

She wore a camel coat and the pearl earrings, and two security officers hung back near the doors, because she sat on the board that paid them.

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