Chapter 46 - TWO DAUGHTERS
I heard nothing.
That was part of the agreement.
No hidden audio.
No monitoring.
If Maisie wanted to tell me afterward, she would.
Those forty-five minutes lasted longer than every court hearing combined.
I walked the hallway.
Sat.
Stood.
Read the same paragraph in a magazine six times.
At minute thirty-one I almost asked the counselor to interrupt.
I did not.
At minute forty-five the door opened.
Maisie came out first.
Her face was red.
She had cried.
My body moved before permission.
I stopped myself.
“Can I hug you?”
She nodded.
I held her.
Over her shoulder I saw Corinne inside the room.
She was crying too.
She did not approach.
Did not look for my eyes.
The counselor closed the door.
In the car, Maisie said nothing for ten minutes.
Then:
“She apologized.”
I waited.
“She didn’t ask me to forgive her.”
I waited.
“She said she remembered me screaming for you.”
My hands tightened around the steering wheel.
“She said that’s the memory she hates most.”
I kept driving.
“I asked why she married you.”
I almost missed the light changing.
“What did she say?”
“That at first she wanted to know what you knew. Then she wanted you to believe her. Then she liked you. Then she loved you. Then every lie made telling the truth harder.”
“That sounds accurate.”
“She said loving someone doesn’t erase what you’re doing to them.”
I nodded.
“What else?”
Maisie stared out the window.
“I asked if she thinks Mom would’ve lived if she called 911.”
My chest hurt.
“What did she say?”
“She said she doesn’t know. Then she said she spent years trying to make ‘I don’t know’ feel like ‘no’ because that was easier.”
I swallowed.
“What did you say?”
“I told her I hate what she did.”
“And?”
“She said I should.”
Silence.
Then Maisie said something I had not expected.
“I don’t hate her.”
I breathed slowly.
“Okay.”
“You okay?”
“No.”
She gave a watery laugh.
“Fair.”
“I’m not angry at you.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“I feel sorry for her.”
That hurt.
I let it.
“And I still don’t want her in my life.”
Relief.
I hated the relief.
Maisie noticed.
“You’re happy.”
“I’m relieved.”
“Same thing.”
“Not exactly.”
She rolled her eyes.
Then became serious.
“I think I needed to see she wasn’t a monster.”
“Why?”
“Because monsters are easy.”
The exact lesson I had learned years earlier.
“What is she?”
Maisie looked out the window.
“A person who did terrible things and has to live after them.”
I drove the rest of the way home quietly.
At home, she went directly to Laura’s cabinet.
Opened the envelope containing Corinne’s letters.
Added one page.
Her own handwriting.
I did not read it.
“What’s that?”
“Something for future me.”
“Can I know?”
“No.”
The word.
Still sacred.
“Okay.”
Years later she would show me.
May you like
It said:
I met Corinne today. She was smaller than the fear.
