In the bedroom I open the closet. I pull on some jeans and a sweater that smells of her, and a pair of her wool socks, and I look at the brass dish on the dresser with the chain and the ring inside it, and I take the chain out of the dish, and I put the chain in the pocket of the jeans, and I leave the ring in the dish.
I leave the ring on the dresser of the woman who killed my husband and if I am honest with myself I know it to be true.
I go down the stairs.
I take the chicken out of the oven and I turn the oven off and I put the chicken on the counter beside the bread, and I do not say a word, and Chief Mercer does not move from the middle of the front room, and I put Max’s coat on at the door, and I put hershoes on, and the cab comes up the road at seven-thirty-one with a single headlight blinking and a yellow magnet on the door.
I walk down the porch steps.
The chief is behind me.
She does not touch me.
The cab driver is a man in a baseball cap who does not look at me. He gets out and he opens the back door for me, and there is a manila envelope on the back seat, and there is a phone in a plastic bag, and there is a stack of cash in a paper band, and there is a folded sheet of paper on top with a name on it I do not recognise, and the envelope has my new self in it.
I get in.
I put my hand on the door before I close it.
I look at Chief Mercer in the porch light.
"Tell her."
"What."
"Tell her I made a chicken."
The chief does not answer.
I close the door.
The cab pulls away from the cabin.
I look out the back window.
The cabin gets smaller.
The road bends.
The cabin is gone.
I sit in the back of the cab on the highway south and I do not cry. I do not cry on the highway. I do not cry at the on-ramp. I do not cry in the dark with the man in the baseball cap who does not look at me. I do not cry at the county line.
I cry forty miles in.
I cry once.
Then I do not cry again.
21
MAX
Isign the last page at eleven-fifty-eight.
I put the cap on the pen. I square the stack. I get up. I take the stack down the hall to her office. The door is open. The lamp on her desk is on. The chief is at the desk in the same shirt with the same coffee cup at the same angle she had at six and she does not look up when I come in.
"Chief."
