Chapter 19 — THE PORCH

Sarah pled to a misdemeanour count of endangering the life or health of a child. She did not fight it. Her attorney, who was appointed, told the court on the record that his client had declined to raise mitigation.

Two years' probation. A parenting course. No jail, because the county does not jail a sole guardian of a transplant child for a first misdemeanour, and because Bev Kessler and Dr. Raman and, in the end, I, all wrote letters.

Mine was three paragraphs and it was the hardest writing I have ever done, and Claire did not know I had written it until the hearing.

I saw Sarah once more, in March, on the porch of the duplex she rents in Marlow, twenty minutes from Ray.

She did not invite me in. That was correct.

Sarah: Is she okay.

Mark: She's okay. She had a scarring follow-up in January. Her lungs are fine.

Sarah: Good.

Mark: Sarah, I need to ask you something and you don't have to answer it.

Sarah: You want to know why I said it. On the balcony.

Mark: Yeah.

She looked out at the street for a while.

Sarah: Because I'd been standing at that window for two hours knowing exactly what I was. And then you drove up. And I thought, he's going to look up at me in about four seconds and see it too.

Sarah: So I said the worst thing I could think of first. So I'd be the one who said it.

Mark: That's not —

Sarah: I know what it is. I've had a court-appointed man explain to me at length what it is.

We stood there.

Mark: I moved the key.

Sarah: I know. It was in the file.

Mark: I never said it out loud to you.

Sarah: No.

Mark: I moved the key. Twenty minutes was yours. The rest of it was mine.

She did not tell me it was all right. She has never told me it was all right, and I have not asked her to, and that is the only honest thing left between the two of us.

Sarah: Mark. Does Claire know you know?

Mark: About the messages?

Sarah: Yes.

Mark: Not yet.

Sarah: She's my sister.

Mark: I know.

Sarah: I'm not asking you to protect her. I'm asking you to tell her, because I've spent six days of my life finding out what happens when everybody waits.