Chapter 10: The Weight of It
We left the hospital at two in the afternoon.
A nurse brought a wheelchair to the room, and I sat in it without argument — my ribs had made their position on walking long distances very clear.
Carol pushed me through the corridor while a hospital security officer walked alongside us.
Patricia Holt had arranged that without being asked.
At the exit, she was waiting.
She handed Carol a folder.
"Discharge instructions, follow-up appointments, and a list of local resources in your area." Then she looked at me.
"You did something very hard last night.
More than once."
"I had help," I said.
"You had to let the help in." She held my gaze for a moment.
"That part was yours."
She squeezed my hand once and went back inside.
The drive to Carol's house took six hours.
I slept for most of it, waking twice when the car hit rough patches of road and my ribs registered their complaint.
Carol drove in silence and did not try to fill it.
We arrived after dark.
Her house was a small colonial on a quiet street — the kind of house that smells like wood and old books and the particular warmth of a home that has been lived in for a long time.
She had a guest room with a quilt that had belonged to our mother.
I sat on the edge of the bed and looked at my hands.
The brace on my wrist.
The bruising already darkening along my forearm.
Six years.
Carol appeared in the doorway with tea.
She sat beside me on the bed and handed me the cup and didn't say anything for a while.
"I keep thinking about the ribs," I said finally.
"The ones I didn't know were broken."
"I know."
"I went to a doctor after that.
The one in the fall — three years ago.
I told them I'd fallen carrying laundry.
They believed me.
I believed me." I looked at the cup.
"How do you believe yourself into something like that?"
"You don't do it all at once," Carol said.
"You do it one small explanation at a time.
Until the explanations feel more real than what actually happened."
I thought about the notebook.
The handwriting so small it was almost invisible.
"I knew," I said.
"Some part of me always knew.
That's why I wrote it down."
"Yes."
"I just couldn't—" I stopped.
"You weren't ready," Carol said.
"And then you were.
That's not a failure, Nora.
That's just how it happens."
We sat for a while longer.
The tea went warm, then cool.
Outside, a car passed on the quiet street.
Headlights swept across the ceiling and moved on.
"The attorney called back," I said.
"While you were driving.
I have an appointment Thursday."
"Good."
"And Diane Voss's attorney called.
She wants to set up a meeting — the two of us, with our attorneys present."
Carol nodded.
"Detective Okafor thinks the DA will move within the week," I said.
"On Graham.
Possibly Russell as well, depending on how the documents read."
"And Judith?"
I had not thought about Judith in hours.
The woman who had stood at the top of eleven wooden stairs and watched me fall and immediately begun to cry.
"I don't know," I said honestly.
"That's for the DA to decide."
Carol took the empty cup from my hands.
"Sleep," she said.
"Everything else is still going to be there in the morning."
"I know."
She stood.
At the door, she paused.
"For what it's worth," she said, "I'm glad you called me."
"I'm glad you answered."
She turned off the light.
I lay in the dark under our mother's quilt and listened to the quiet of a house where no one was listening from the next room.
No footsteps on the hardwood at two in the morning.
No particular quality of silence that meant I needed to be careful.
Just quiet.
Just ordinary, unremarkable quiet.
May you like
I had forgotten what it felt like.
I remembered now.
