“You never mailed my letters?” She couldn’t believe it. “You lied. You said you mailed them!”
Mack glanced at Steve. “Maybe she wouldn’t even have to testify. She gets so damn nervous. I could relate everything she told me about him.” He gestured at her. “I mean, look, why reduce her to this?”
“And what would that be? What would you relate?” Steve asked, his gaze keen on Mack, who could not keep it. “Tell us.”
“What she told me about herself and … and about what happened.”
She swayed gently with the rising pitch of his voice. As much as it hurt, she finally understood. The truth did not matter. It never had, never did, never would. The emptiness was at the center and the center would always be empty. Only love could fill it and she would never be loved and all at once this knowledge, this terrible certainty, was unendurable.
“And what did happen?” Steve asked with the lightness of a page being turned. The room was quiet. There was no sound, no sound at all. “Martha, you tell me,” Steve whispered. “Tell me what happened.”
She stared at Mack, but he closed his eyes.
“Martha?” Steve reached across the table for her hand. “What happened? Tell me. Tell me the truth.”
She bit her lip and tried not to smile. “We made love,” she said softly, and the smile jerked across her face.
“Oh my God,” Frances groaned, covering her mouth as if she were going to be sick.
Martha leaned forward, desperate for Mack to say something, but he just kept shaking his head from side to side. “He’s ashamed. He’s afraid to say it. He won’t say the word,” she tried to explain to Steve, who stared down at the table. They all did now; they couldn’t bear to look at her. “It’s because I’m so disgusting! You see, I make him sick. Just like I make everyone sick. Sick, sick, sick. I am a bad person, a very, very, bad, bad person.” And now, with this final truth, birds flew from her mouth, ugly black flapping wings that crackled so close they made her cringe and wince. Her hands writhed, the claws twisting and turning. And soon there would be stillness here and peace here in this dark place, the safest place, where there was only room for one. For her, and she understood this now, finally. Someone spoke. She cocked her head to listen. It was a man. A man. He was saying, he said, this was what he said, exactly what he said, and she would never forget it:
“I was drunk. And you see …” His voice broke. “… she had never been loved.”
“In other words, you raped her!” Steve said with loathing.
“No!” Frances gasped. “No!” she said again, looking from one man to the other.
“He raped her! The son of a bitch raped her!” Steve cried, banging the table with both fists.
“I took advantage of her.” Mack nodded. “I did.”
“You raped her!”
“I was drunk.”
“And when you were drunk, you raped her.”
“Whatever,” Mack sighed, looking up with an almost shy smile. “But Martha won’t call it that. She thought it was love. And maybe it was,” he said, that is what he said, exactly what he said. And when he was gone, forever and ever gone, and she was alone, forever and ever alone, those were the words she remembered, the most important words, and nothing and no one could ever change them, and she would write those words, exactly those words, in all her letters to all her friends.
About the Author
Mary McGarry Morris grew up in Vermont and now lives on the North Shore in Massachusetts. Her first novel, Vanished, was published in 1988 and was nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner Award. A Dangerous Woman (1991) was chosen by Time magazine as one of the “Five Best Novels of the Year” and was made into a motion picture starring Debra Winger, Barbara Hershey, and Gabriel Byrne. Songs in Ordinary Time (1995) was an Oprah’s Book Club selection, which propelled it to the top of the New York Times bestseller list for many weeks, and it was adapted for a TV movie starring Sissy Spacek and Beau Bridges. Morris’s other highly acclaimed works include the novels Fiona Range (2000), A Hole in the Universe (2004), The Lost Mother (2005), The Last Secret (2009), and Light from a Distant Star (2011), as well as the play MTL: The Insanity File.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1991 by Mary McGarry Morris
Cover design by Jason Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-4806-4
This edition published in 2017 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
180 Maiden Lane
New York, NY 10038
www.openroadmedia.com
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