Chapter 10

The baby came at 11:40 that night, in the clinic in Rutland, six pounds and four ounces, a girl, and I named her June, which was the only name I ever wanted.

State police took Cole at the quarry office and Dru at the house. Priya stayed until the second car came. The card went with her into evidence, and I didn't see it again for a long time. They found the pill organizer where I'd left it, in the nail bucket in the shed, and the state's attorney said something in the paper about "a conspiracy to defraud a vulnerable adult," which is a way of saying what she did.

Mamie didn't go to a facility.

That was the fight I won. Her head cleared inside a month, once the pills stopped. Her trust was frozen while the case ran, and I petitioned for guardianship, and Dru's lawyer argued that I was a psych case with a newborn and no money. I sat in a courtroom with June in a car seat and Mamie next to me in a borrowed coat, and when the judge asked Mamie who she wanted to live with, Mamie took my hand and tapped my wrist three times, and the judge said, "I'll take that as an answer."

I signed away the quarry.

That's the cost, and I want to be honest about it. I traded every marital claim to the land, the equipment, the house, the proceeds, in exchange for a protective order with no end date, custody, and Mamie's care. Cole's lawyer wanted it. Dru's lawyer wanted it more. I gave them the mountain and I kept the two people who matter, and I have never once, not for one second, wished I'd done it differently.

We live in town now. Second floor of a house on Wales Street, two bedrooms, a porch with a rail Mamie can hold. She has a new cane-I bought it at the hardware store, plain aluminum, ugly as sin-because the slate one went into evidence and I never wanted it back in the house anyway. She walks the porch when it's warm and taps the rail when she's nervous, and sometimes she taps for no reason at all, just to hear it.

Cole wrote me one letter from the jail. I didn't read it. I gave it to my lawyer.

Dru wrote me four. I didn't read those either.

The quarry sold in June to Harlan Reeve, and the new sign says something else now, and once in a while I drive past on my way to the grocery and I look at the oak by the fence and think about a gray box with a lens and a speaker and a card the size of a stamp.

I'm not going to say it saved me. What saved me was thirty minutes and a warden who came back.

But it's the reason I'm allowed to know the truth.

Tonight June is asleep in the crib by the wall, and Mamie is dozing in the chair by the window with her aluminum cane across her knees. The fog is down again, and the streetlight makes a soft gray circle on the porch.

Mamie opens her eyes a little. She looks at the crib. Then she looks at me.

She reaches down and taps the floor. Three times.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I put my hand on her hand and I say, "I'm here."