Ellen Graham’s kitchen clock echoed through the rooms of her house as they talked on for hours. In the morning, Ellen would begin to make phone calls—the State Police, the university administration, the FBI—to speak to officials, to lawyers, to journalists, to start her final crusade. But for now she seemed to want company, so Shelly stayed.
Ellen told her about her separation from her husband six months earlier. (“Some couples grow closer with this sort of trauma, they tell me, but most don’t. We didn’t.”) They talked on about their childhoods, their pasts. Shelly told Ellen about her brother—the flag-draped coffin—and then, without intending to, she told her about Jeremy.
Perhaps, Shelly realized even as the story was coming out of her mouth, she’d never intended to tell anyone at all.
Perhaps until this moment, telling it, it hadn’t really happened.
But there was no taking it back now, or denying it, after Ellen’s reaction:
“Oh, my sweet fucking Jesus Christ,” Ellen cried out, and when she leapt to her feet, her own cat, which had sat like a statue through the entire evening, came suddenly to life and ran from the room. Shelly looked at the place where it had been sitting, and felt she could almost see its permanent aura still glowing where it had been.
Ellen began to pace then, and then she went back to the buffet, took out the cigarette she’d tossed into it hours ago, lit it with a shaking match, and dragged on it as if she were trying to smoke it down to the filter all at once. Afterward, she said, “I need a drink, Shelly. What would you like?”
Shelly never had a chance to answer. Ellen returned with a bottle of white wine and two glasses. She poured the wine. They drank in silence until Ellen said, “Your life is in danger, Shelly.”
Shelly said nothing.
“You’re not going back to your apartment, maybe ever, and certainly not tonight,” Ellen said.
“No,” Shelly said. “Tonight I thought I’d find a Motel 6.”
“Of course you won’t,” Ellen said. “For one thing, look at the snow.” She nodded toward the tiny crack between the curtains in her front window. “You can’t drive in that. Plus you have nowhere to go.”
Shelly felt the tears coming in to her eyes. Nowhere to go. But also the kindness, again, and from someone who’d suffered things Shelly could not, herself, begin to imagine. Such a surplus of kindness. Had Shelly ever met anyone kinder?
“No,” Shelly said. “I couldn’t.”
“Yes. I’ll make up the couch for you, sweetheart.”
Ellen poured more wine into Shelly’s glass then, and touched her lightly on the shoulder. She never mentioned Jeremy or Josie again—another bit of compassion for which Shelly was incredibly grateful.
Mostly they drank their wine in silence.
The wine was so pale it made the glasses—beautiful crystal goblets, surely another heirloom, or a wedding gift—look emptier than they had when they were actually empty.