Chapter 8
She knocked like she still lived there. Three short raps, then her key in the lock.
I hadn't given it back yet. I hadn't changed it either.
She came in holding the dress from the gala on a dry-cleaner hanger, the dark V-neck covered in plastic, and a paper bag from the bakery on Main. Her gold hoops caught the light from my kitchen window. She'd done her hair the same way, pulled back tight.
"I brought this back," she said. "Thought you wouldn't want it in the closet."
My apartment was one room and a kitchen I could actually use now that I wasn't pretending to need the chair. The black wheelchair was folded against the wall by the door. I didn't move it.
"You didn't need to come," I said.
"I did." She laid the dress over the back of my couch carefully, like it mattered. She set the bakery bag on the counter. "Cinnamon rolls. From that place you liked."
I didn't touch them. I stayed by the window. She stood in the middle of the floor and breathed slow, the way she had on stage before she smiled.
"I paid Sheriff Dalton," she said. It came out flat, like she'd rehearsed it. "After your accident. Two thousand cash. He wrote it up as a single-vehicle, no witnesses. My brother was drunk. He was coming back from the lake."
I felt my jaw tighten. I hadn't asked yet, but she kept going.
"He called me from the ditch before the ambulance got there," she said. "He said your brake lights just stopped. He didn't mean to hit you. He swerved and your car went off County Road 9. He was twenty-two. He said he wanted to kill himself if it came out. He still says that."
She looked at me then, eyes red but dry.
"I thought if I kept you close, I could keep him safe too," she said. "And keep us safe."
She reached into her purse and pulled out a folded foundation check. She didn't hand it to me right away.
"There's eighty thousand left in the gala fund that hasn't been allocated," she said. "The board will sign off on a settlement. Quiet. No report, no press. You get therapy, whatever you need. He gets help. We don't destroy both families over one night. You can move. Start over."
She finally held it out. The paper shook a little.
I didn't take it. "You called me incapable."
She flinched.
"At the gala. Before I stood up. You said it loud enough for the table to hear. Incapable. You need me."
She stared at the check in her hand, then folded it slowly in half.
"I needed you to believe that," she said. Her voice got smaller. "If you believed you couldn't do anything without me, you wouldn't look. You wouldn't ask Dalton for the report. You wouldn't check your dashcam. You wouldn't leave."
The plastic over the dress crackled when the heater kicked on. I could smell the sugar from the bakery bag and the faint perfume still on the dress.
"You needed me dependent," I said.
She nodded. One short nod. Her throat moved when she swallowed.
"If you needed me, I could control what you knew," she said. "I told myself I was protecting you. That finding out would break you more than the accident. But I was protecting me. And my brother. I kept you in that chair even after I saw you could stand in the kitchen that one night. I didn't say anything. I just kept pushing you."
I remembered that night. Three months after the accident. I'd pulled myself up on the counter to reach a glass. She'd been in the doorway. She'd said nothing and walked away.
"You're not incapable," she whispered. "You never were. I made you feel that way."
She set the folded check on my counter next to the bakery bag. "Take it or don't. But please don't go to the board. Don't go to Dalton again. My brother will do something stupid. I mean it."
I picked up the check, looked at the number, at her handwriting on the memo line — support — and set it back down.
"I'm not taking foundation money to keep quiet about a crash you paid to bury," I said. "That's not help. That's you buying the ending."
Her eyes filled then. She didn't wipe them.
"So what are you going to do?" she asked.
I didn't answer that. I walked to the couch, lifted the dress still in its plastic, and held it out to her.
"Take this with you," I said.
She took it. Her hands closed tight around the hanger. She stood there a second longer, breathing hard through her nose, waiting for me to say something else, to forgive her, to tell her my plan.
May you like
I didn't.
She turned and unlocked my door herself and left, the dress over her shoulder, the check still on my counter where I'd left it. I listened to her footsteps down the hall until they were gone.
