Chapter 64
Marin
On the coffee table: a plate with banana bread. Half eaten. A cup of tea, gone cold.
“I made him comfortable,” Mrs. Mather says. “Fed him. Gave him tea. Read to him from Psalms until he settled.”
She’s folding a dish towel. Smoothing the creases out with her palm the way you smooth a bedsheet.
“How long has he been sleeping?” I say.
She doesn’t answer right away. She sets the dish towel on the counter. Lines the edge up with the tile. Straightens it.
“Mrs. Mather. How long has he been sleeping?”
“He’s not sleeping, dear.”
The room tilts. Not much. Just enough.
“What do you mean he’s not sleeping?”
She turns to face me. Her eyes are clear. Her hands are still. Not a tremor.
“He was suffering, Marin. You saw it. I saw it. The whole town saw it. The wandering. The confusion. The pain. A person shouldn’t have to live like that. Not when it’s clear the Lord is ready for them.”
I look at Charles on the couch. The quilt. The folded hands. The closed eyes.
My eyes widen. “What did you do?”
“What anyone would do.”
She says it simply. The way she’d say I watered the garden.
“Out here, we don’t let things suffer. That’s not mercy.
That’s cruelty. When a horse breaks its leg, you don’t let it scream in a field.
When a dog can’t walk, you don’t let it drag itself across the floor.
You do what’s right. You do what’s kind.
And then you make your peace with God and you move on. ”
“He wasn’t a horse, Helen.”
“No. He was worse off than a horse. A horse doesn’t know it’s dying.
Charles knew. I could see it in his eyes.
” She picks up the kettle. “The tea helped. Calmed him right down. And the bread—he ate half the loaf. Poor thing was starving. After that, he just...went quiet. Peaceful. The way it should be.”
I stare at her. She pours hot water into a cup like she’s making tea for a neighbor who popped in for a chat.
“You killed him.”
“I put him out of his misery.” She sets the cup in front of me.
“There’s a difference. And out here, we know the difference.
We’ve always known. My mother knew. Her mother before that.
You don’t let people suffer because it makes you feel better about not having to make the hard choice. That’s vanity. That’s not love.”
She sits across from me. Folds her hands in her lap. The same way she folded Charles’s hands on his chest.
“I called the doctor,” she says. “He’s on his way. He’ll see what I see. What everyone’s seen for weeks. A man with a tumor who finally stopped fighting it.”
I look at the banana bread. The tea she just poured me. The tea she poured Charles.
I don’t touch it.
“I know this is hard,” she says. Her voice softens. The first crack. Small. Human. “I know you did everything you could. You were a good wife to him, Marin. The Lord knows that. The whole town knows that.”
I did everything I could.
I look at Charles one more time. The folded hands.
The closed eyes. The face I kidnapped and restrained and watched movies with and screamed at and loved in every broken way I knew how.
That face is still now. Permanently still.
And the woman who made it still is sitting across from me with her hands folded in her lap waiting for the kettle to cool and the doctor to come and God to confirm what she already knows—that she did the right thing.
She did the right thing. She’s sure of it. The way she was sure about the casseroles and the prayer chains and the beads from Father Donnelly.
I sit in the chair. I look at the tea I will not drink. I look at the man on the couch. I look at Mrs. Mather, who is already thinking about what to bring to the funeral.
Luke took my choice from me. And Mrs. Mather took the rest.
I don’t say a word.
Because there is nothing left to say.