CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX — ONE LAST CONVERSATION

The final time I spoke to Judith was outside the neighborhood grocery store.
She stood beside a shopping cart containing bread, tomatoes, and a bundle of white flowers.
I nearly walked past her without noticing.
Then she said my name.
“Marianne.”
I stopped a few feet away.
“Judith.”
For once she did not begin with a complaint about the investigation.
“I heard Sophie is doing well in school,” she said.
“She is.”
“I’m glad.”
She looked at the pavement.
“I suppose you don’t believe me.”
“I believe you can be glad for her,” I answered.
“That doesn’t change what happened.”
Judith shifted her grip on the cart.
“I thought if I could keep the team together until the championship, everyone would understand later.”
“You broke our mailbox to stop a letter from reaching us.

”
“I was desperate.”
“I know.”
She looked surprised by my agreement.
“Desperation doesn’t make the decision harmless,” I continued.
“It just tells me you knew how much that letter mattered.”
Judith swallowed.
“I never wanted Sophie hurt.”
“She was already hurt.”
The traffic moved steadily beyond the parking lot.
A child called for her mother near the entrance.
Judith tried to speak, then seemed to reconsider.
“Do you think she’ll ever forgive me?” she asked.
“That’s not a question I can answer for her.”
I picked up my groceries and stepped back.
“Please don’t ask me to carry it home for her either.”
Judith nodded once.
I walked toward my car without looking over my shoulder.
At home I told Sophie only that I had seen Judith and that the conversation was over.


Sophie asked whether she needed to do anything.
“No,” I said.
“You can keep living your day.”
She returned to the crossword puzzle spread across the table.
A few minutes later she asked how to spell the word for an athlete’s landing mat.
Daniel shouted an incorrect answer from the living room, and Sophie laughed hard enough to drop her pencil.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN — AN ORDINARY DELIVERY

By midsummer our new mailbox had collected the usual mixture of bills, grocery coupons, and letters from distant relatives.
I no longer looked toward Judith’s house each time the postal truck arrived.
Pauline still waved from the driver’s seat, and sometimes she stopped long enough to ask how Sophie was doing.
One Thursday a large envelope arrived from a local community arts center.
It contained a schedule for an exhibition about movement, recovery, and young athletes.
Sophie had submitted a photograph from her science project, and the center wanted to display it with a short statement she had written.
She read the acceptance aloud while Daniel made dinner.
“They’re letting me choose the caption,” she said.
“What are you going to write?” I asked.
“Something simple.”
She showed us a draft about the difference between striving for excellence and being afraid of failure.
Daniel suggested shortening one sentence.
Sophie refused his first edit and accepted the second.
I watched them argue cheerfully over a comma and felt an unfamiliar peace.
A year earlier she would have asked Judith which words made her look strongest.
Now she was deciding what she actually wanted to say.
The envelope lay open beside the salt shaker while we ate.
After dinner Sophie slipped it into a folder and left the folder on her desk.
Nobody hid it, destroyed it, or tried to decide whether she deserved to read it.