Chapter 8: What Linda Said on Sunday
She called at eleven in the morning.
I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, and when the phone rang I looked at it for one full ring before I picked up.
"Hello, Linda."
"Hello." A pause.
"Thank you for taking my call."
"Of course."
Another pause.
Longer.
"I've been trying to work out what to say to you," she said.
"I've written it down three times and thrown it away."
"You don't need a script," I said.
"No," she said.
"I suppose I don't."
I waited.
"What I did at your wedding was wrong," she said.
"Not complicated.
Not something I can explain away with what was happening with Marcus or with money or with anything else.
I stood at your gift table and I took what wasn't mine.
In front of your guests.
On your wedding day." Her voice was steady but thin.
"There is no version of that story where I wasn't wrong."
I didn't say anything.
"I've been doing this for a long time," she said.
"Taking a little here, a little there.
Telling myself it was owed to me somehow.
That I'd put in more than I got back.
I don't know when I started believing that, but I did." A breath.
"Your mother's list made me see it written down for the first time.
All of it.
All those names."
"Frank Okafor," I said.
"Yes."
"He's sixty-seven years old."
"I know."
"He called my dad last week," I said.
"When my dad told him what happened, he cried.
He thought he'd lost it somehow.
That it was his fault."
The line was quiet.
"I called him yesterday," Linda said.
"I told him myself."
I hadn't known that.
"What did he say?"
"He said he forgave me." Her voice broke slightly on the last word.
"He didn't have to do that.
He did it anyway."
I thought about Frank.
Big laugh, slow walk, always brought my dad's favorite biscuits when he visited.
Sixty-seven years old and he had blamed himself for months.
"What about Patrice?" I said.
"I'm calling her tomorrow," Linda said.
"And Jenna.
I'm going through the list.
All of them."
"That's good," I said.
"It doesn't fix it."
"No," I said.
"It doesn't.
But it's the right thing to do."
We were quiet for a moment.
"I want to ask you something," Linda said.
"Okay."
"Do you think — in time — there's any possibility that you and I could—" She stopped.
Started again.
"I'm not asking you to forget it.
I'm not asking you to pretend.
I just want to know if there's a door.
Even a small one.
That I haven't closed it completely."
I looked out the window.
The yard was still.
A bird moved through the branches of the tree at the back fence and was gone.
"There's a door," I said.
"But I need time."
"That's fair," she said immediately.
"That's more than fair."
"And Linda — if anything like this ever happens again.
Anything.
It won't be a dinner conversation."
"I understand," she said.
"I do."
"Okay."
"Okay," she said softly.
After we hung up, I sat for a while with my hands around the tea mug.
It had gone cold.
I didn't mind.
Daniel came in from the other room.
He stood in the doorway and looked at me.
"How was it?" he said.
"Hard," I said.
"But okay."
He came and sat down across from me.
The same chair he'd sat in the morning after the wedding, when I'd come to him still in my going-away dress, too angry to eat.
"My mom called Frank," I said.
He nodded.
"I know.
He called her back this morning.
They talked for forty minutes."
I looked at my husband.
"Your dad is filing with the other families next week," I said.
"Tuesday," he said.
"His attorney confirmed it yesterday."
"Good."
Daniel reached across the table and put his hand over mine.
"Are you all right?" he said.
I thought about it.
Really thought about it.
"I think so," I said.
"I think I will be."
Outside, the sun had come through the clouds.
May you like
It moved across the kitchen floor slowly, the way it does in late morning, and settled at the edge of the table between us.
I turned my hand over and held his.
