Chapter 5: Three O'Clock
Emily came through the gate at three-twelve, backpack hanging off one shoulder, talking to a girl from her class about something that had apparently been very unfair at lunch.
She stopped when she saw the unfamiliar car in the drive.
She looked at me on the front step, then at Margaret sitting beside me, then back at me.
"Who's that?" she said, in the direct way that six-year-olds ask things that adults spend ten minutes working up to.
"Her name is Margaret," I said.
"Come here."
Emily walked over slowly, still watching Margaret with the careful attention she gave to anything new.
Margaret looked at her for a moment without speaking.
"Your father taught you chess," she said finally.
Emily blinked.
"Richard taught me chess."
"Yes." Margaret's voice was steady, but something behind it wasn't.
"He was my father too.
A long time ago."
Emily considered this with the seriousness she applied to most things.
"So you're like my sister?" she said.
"Except old?"
I pressed my hand over my mouth.
Margaret made a sound that started as something else and came out as a laugh — short and surprised, the kind that escapes before you can decide whether to let it.
"Something like that," she said.
Emily sat down on the step on the other side of Margaret, dropped her backpack between her feet, and said: "Do you know how to play?"
"Chess?" Margaret said.
"A little.
Your grandfather tried to teach me when I was about your age.
I was never very good."
"That's okay," Emily said.
"I'll teach you.
I'm better than Richard was, he said so himself."
Margaret looked at me over Emily's head.
I didn't have words for what was on her face.
I don't think she did either.
We sat there on the front step of the estate for a while, the three of us, while the afternoon light moved across the gravel.
Nobody was in a hurry to go inside.
Nobody suggested it.
It was Margaret who finally spoke.
"I owe you an apology," she said quietly, to me, not to Emily.
"You don't," I said.
"You didn't know about me any more than I knew about you."
"No.
But I knew about the will three weeks ago, and I let Mr.
Harlow deliver it the way my father planned, with that smile and that line." She paused.
"I watched through the window from the car.
I saw your face when he said it." She stopped again.
"I should have come in immediately.
I'm sorry I didn't."
I thought about that moment — sitting down on the floor, the letter shaking in my hands.
"He was right, though," I said.
"I wouldn't have believed any of it otherwise."
"That doesn't make it kind."
"No," I agreed.
"It doesn't."
Emily, who had been listening to all of this with her chin resting on her hand, said: "Are you staying for dinner?"
Margaret looked at her.
"I hadn't planned to."
"We have soup," Emily said.
"Claire makes it on Tuesdays.
It's good."
Margaret looked at me.
"It is Tuesday," I said.
She was quiet for just a moment.
May you like
"Then yes," she said.
"I suppose I am."
