Chapter 6: The Night She Left and the Morning After
She left at half past eight.
Dolores watched from the upstairs landing — not to gloat, but because she had learned, in eleven years, that watching was sometimes the only way to be certain.
The woman came out of the sitting room with a coat over her arm and a bag that had clearly been packed before tonight, which told Dolores something she filed away quietly.
The bag was not overfull.
It was not a bag someone packed in a hurry.
It was a bag someone had kept ready.
Thomas stood in the entrance hall.
He did not help her with the bag.
He did not open the door.
He waited while she opened it herself.
At the threshold she turned.
"You'll see," she said.
"When she's older.
When she's done this to someone else.
You'll remember this night."
Thomas said nothing.
"I was trying to help her.
I was trying to give her structure.
You were never here to do it yourself."
Thomas said nothing.
Her voice tightened.
"Say something."
"Goodnight," he said.
She left.
He closed the door.
Dolores came down the stairs slowly, and Thomas stood in the entrance hall with his hand still on the door handle, looking at the floor.
He stayed that way for long enough that Dolores stopped at the bottom of the stairs and waited.
Then he said, without looking up: "How long?"
"The crying?
Since the third month."
He closed his eyes briefly.
"Why didn't you tell me?"
"I tried twice.
She was there both times.
After the second time, she told me that if I went to you again, she'd tell you I was unstable.
That I'd been confused about things.
She had a way of making the ground feel uncertain."
Thomas looked up.
"I'm sorry, Dolores."
"You don't need to apologize to me."
"I do." He let go of the door handle.
"I wasn't here.
And I told myself that was all right because the house was running and Lily seemed — I told myself she was adjusting.
That it was grief.
That it was normal."
"She was adjusting," Dolores said.
"She adjusted to surviving."
He absorbed that.
"She's asleep," Dolores added.
"I checked twenty minutes ago.
She went out quickly.
She was exhausted."
"She's been exhausted for months," he said.
It wasn't a question.
"Yes."
He moved toward the kitchen, and Dolores followed.
He filled the kettle without asking if she wanted tea, which told her he needed the task more than the tea.
She sat at the table — not her usual spot near the counter, but the chair across from where Lily had sat earlier, because the shape of the evening still felt present in the room.
"The paper," Thomas said, his back to her.
"I need to understand what I'm dealing with.
Legally.
I need to know if what she wrote — if what Lily described — rises to the level where I need to involve someone outside this house."
Dolores reached into her apron pocket and set the folded paper on the table.
Thomas turned, saw it, and left the kettle to come and sit.
He unfolded it again.
Read it again.
The third time now.
His jaw tightened on the same word it had tightened on the first time.
"She wrote this herself," he said.
"Yes.
I found it three days ago when I was checking the floorboards in her room.
The one by the window had been lifting.
I was going to fix it.
Instead I found this."
"And you waited."
"I was waiting for you to come home.
I didn't want to do this over the phone.
I didn't want her to be able to manage the conversation from a distance."
Thomas refolded the paper.
He held it in both hands for a moment, not moving.
"I'm going to call someone tomorrow," he said.
"A professional.
Someone who works with children.
I want Lily assessed — not because I doubt her, but because I want someone qualified to hear what she has to say.
Someone whose account can't be dismissed."
"That's the right thing," Dolores said.
"And I'm going to call a solicitor."
Dolores nodded.
The kettle began to whistle.
Thomas got up and poured.
He set a cup in front of her without asking how she took it — he knew, after eleven years — and sat back down with his own.
"Dolores," he said.
"I need to ask you something directly."
"Ask."
"Is there anything else?
Anything you saw or heard that isn't on that paper?"
She looked at him steadily.
"Yes."
He waited.
"The bruise on her left arm, two months ago.
She said she fell on the stairs.
I didn't believe it then.
I believe it less now."
Thomas set his cup down.
"I should have said something sooner," Dolores said.
"I know that.
I told myself I wasn't certain enough.
I told myself I was reading into things.
I told myself—" She stopped.
"I told myself a lot of things that I shouldn't have told myself."
"You said something tonight," Thomas said.
"When it counted."
"It should have counted sooner."
Neither of them spoke for a moment.
Then Thomas said: "First thing tomorrow.
The calls."
"Yes."
He picked up his cup again.
Outside, the street was quiet.
The house was quiet in a different way than it had been an hour ago — not the tight, held-breath quiet of earlier, but something looser.
Something that had been clenched for a long time and had just, barely, begun to release.
May you like
Upstairs, in her room with the loose floorboard by the window, Lily slept.
And for the first time in eight months, she did not wake up once.
