Chapter 8 — JUDITH'S VERSION

Judith called me eleven times over the next four days.

I answered on the twelfth, on a Sunday afternoon, because Alma had told me to answer eventually and because Alma had also told me exactly what to say and what not to.

"Daniel."

"Judith."

"Thank you for picking up."

"Okay."

"I want to explain about the paper."

"Alright."

"But not on the phone. Can I come by?"

She came at four.

She sat at the island in the cream cardigan and she did not look at the corner of the room, which I noticed, because everybody looks at the corner of the room once they know.

She had brought a foil pan with a chicken casserole in it, which she set on the counter, and which I did not touch and eventually threw away.

"How is Josie?"

"She's at my mother's."

"Still?"

"Still."

"She should be home."

"She'll be home when there's a supervision plan on file."

Judith folded her hands.

"You've made this very formal."

"Yes."

"That's a choice you made, Daniel. You could have called me that night. You could have called Corinne. Instead you called the government into your family."

I did not answer, which was Alma's instruction. Do not defend. Let her fill it.

She filled it.

"Do you know what my daughter's life has been?"

"Tell me."

"She was twenty-five when she had Josie. She was thirty-three when she had Theo, and that pregnancy nearly killed her, and you were in Charlotte for six weeks of it."

"Four."

"Six weeks in a hotel while she carried your son."

"It was four, and I came home every weekend, and you can check the receipts because I've kept them since March."

Judith's jaw tightened at since March, which she should not have reacted to and did.

"She was drowning," she said. "And nobody helped her."

"You were in the house every week."

"I was helping."

"You put a six-month-old into a first grader's arms and said make a sandwich, and left."

"That is not—"

"It's on video with sound, Judith. 4:12:19 in the afternoon. You said stop whining, and your mother deserves a life, and then Josie said I'm hungry and you said make a sandwich and you walked out."

She sat there.

The refrigerator ran.

"She's seven," Judith said finally. "I was doing chores at seven."

"Chores."

"On my mother's farm in Sampson County I was up at five and I had a job before school and I have never once thought of myself as mistreated."

"Was there a baby?"

"What?"

"Were you holding a seventeen-pound infant for six and a half hours with nobody in the building?"

She did not answer that.

I have thought about her a great deal since and I do not think Judith Vance is a stupid woman or even, in the ordinary use of the word, a cruel one. I think she genuinely believed that what she was doing was making her daughter's life bearable, and I think she had decided a long time ago that a child's discomfort is a currency you are allowed to spend on an adult's happiness.

"Let's talk about July 18," I said.

She looked up.

"You notarized my signature on a deed of trust for four hundred and twelve thousand dollars."

"Daniel—"

"You swore that I appeared before you. I was under a dental office in Durham. There are nineteen photographs with GPS in them."

Judith's hands came apart.

"I want you to understand the position I was in."

"I'd like that very much."

"I need you to withdraw the complaint first."

"No."

"Then I can't tell you."

"Then don't."

She stood up.

She got as far as the doorway and then she stopped, with her back to me, and she said something that I did not understand for another five months.

"You think Corinne did this to you."

"Didn't she?"

"Corinne," Judith said, "is not the one who chose you."

And she left the casserole and went out to her car.