Chapter 8 #4
By ten a.m., Briar's friend in Asheville — a woman named Mira Quintrell, fifty-three, twenty-six years in family law, soft voice, iron spine — is on speakerphone in the middle of the table walking Nora through what a Virginia conservatorship petition has to prove and what it has to fail to prove and exactly what we are going to do about it.
By eleven, Mira has agreed to take the case.
By noon, Wren has driven into Asheville and back with Mira's retainer paperwork and Nora has signed it on the long table in front of all of us with my hand on the small of her back and not one tear on her face.
By one, Elara has built a folder on her tablet with every document Mira asked for — Nora's lease, her tax returns, her library employment record, her checking account, her medical history with the family doctor in town, the statement from Dr. Helen Marsh on Linden Street that Nora has been her patient for three years and is of entirely sound mind and independent function.
By two, the library board chair has come up to the clubhouse in person, in her sensible cardigan and her sensible shoes, and sat at the long table with us, and looked Nora in the eye, and said, I am not removing you from the schedule.
I am not even bringing this to the board on Thursday unless you want me to.
You are our librarian. You have been our librarian for four years. You will be our librarian on Friday.
Nora cries then.
Just for a second.
I hold her hand under the table.
I do not say anything.
By three, Knox has spoken to Sheriff Pell on Linden Street and Sheriff Pell has, in his careful Sheriff Pell way, indicated that should any visitor from out of state attempt to remove Miss Ashby against her stated will from the town of Clover Ridge or any property therein, that would be a matter the sheriff's department would take a strong and immediate interest in.
By three thirty, Diesel has finished a long quiet phone call with someone whose name I do not catch and has hung up and said, only, Graham Forsythe is not driving south this week.
He has been advised against it by counsel.
I do not ask Diesel what kind of counsel.
I do not need to.
By four, the long table has cleared out — Wren back to the diner, Silas back to the shop, Mav back to the firehouse, Diesel back to the office, Elara back to the studio — and it is only Knox and Briar and Hawk and Nora and me left in the kitchen with cold coffee and the late afternoon sun coming long and gold through the window, and Nora is leaned against my shoulder with her eyes closed and her hand still in mine on the table.
Knox closes his notebook.
He looks at Nora.
He says, "You did good today, Miss Ashby."
Nora opens her eyes.
She says, "I did not do anything. You all did."
Knox shakes his head.
He says, "You walked in here this morning and told a room full of grown men and women exactly what you needed and you did it without crying. That is doing something. That is doing the only thing that mattered. The rest of us were just executing instructions."
Briar reaches across the table.
She puts her hand on Nora's free hand.
She says, "You called me by my first name on the phone at nine o'clock this morning, sweetheart. That is the first time you have done that since I have known you. You are not the woman you were yesterday."
Nora's eyes get wet.
She does not look away.
She says, very small, "I am tired."
Knox nods.
He says, "Take her home, Colt."
I take her home.
I take her home the long way, on my bike, with her arms around my ribs and her cheek against my back through the henley, and the late afternoon sun is going long and gold across the ridge, and the air is warm and full of the green wet smell of a town finishing a long good day, and I take her up Linden and across the foot bridge and down the alley and around the back of her little house, and I park the bike in the gravel and I help her off and I walk her up the back steps and into her kitchen, and I make her tea, and I sit her down on the small couch by the window, and I take off her sandals, and I cover her with the quilt off the back of the couch, and I sit on the floor by her feet with my back against the couch, and I watch her fall asleep in the long gold light with one hand curled small under her chin and the tea going slowly cool on the side table next to her.
I sit on the floor of her little kitchen.
I do not move for an hour.
I watch her sleep.
I watch the gold light come longer across the floor and turn pink and then start to go gray, and I watch the dust come down slow through the long bars of the late light, and I watch her chest rise and fall under the quilt, and I let myself think the sentence I have been carrying since the Prologue of my life.
Will I ever be more than a weapon.
I think about it in her kitchen, with her sleeping under her grandmother's quilt and the tea cooling and the gold light going pink on the wall.
I think: I was not a weapon today.
I think: I did not put a hand on anyone.
I did not raise my voice. I did not go to Richmond.
I did not break a bone or a wrist or a finger or a door.
I sat at a table for four hours and I took notes in a notebook and I held her hand under the table and I let other people who love her help her, and I did not, one time, all day, clench my fist.
I am more than a weapon.
I have been more than a weapon for a long time, maybe.
I just did not have anyone who needed me to be.
She stirs in her sleep on the couch. She turns her face toward me without waking. Her hand comes out from under the quilt and she puts it on the top of my head where my head is leaned back against the couch by her hip, and her fingers settle in my hair, and she does not wake.
She just sleeps with her hand in my hair.
I close my eyes.
I sit on the floor of her kitchen in the going-gray light with her hand in my hair and the cold tea on the table and the long quiet still settled over both of us, and I let myself believe, finally — slow, careful, the way she taught me — that I am going to get to keep this.
Outside, on the ridge, the thrush is doing its three notes one more time before the dark.
The day is over.
We made it through.
We will make it through the next one too.