Bag of Bones by Stephen King

When she finally spoke, her voice was low and defeated. It hurt to hear her sounding that way, but like the cynical look on her face earlier, it wasn’t surprising. And I hardened myself against it as best I could. Hey, Mattie, tough old world. Pick one.

‘Why would you do this?’ she asked. ‘Why would you hire an expensive New York lawyer to take my case? That is what you’re offering, isn’t it? It’s got to be, because I sure can’t hire him. I got

thirty thousand dollars’ insurance money when Lance died, and was lucky to get that. It was a policy he bought from one of his Warrington’s friends, almost as a joke, but without it I would have lost the trailer last winter. They may love Dickie Brooks at Western Savings, but they don’t give a rat’s ass for Mattie Stanchfield Devore. After taxes I make about a hundred a week at the library. So you’re offering to pay. Right?’

‘Right.’

‘Why? You don’t even know us.’

‘Because . . . ‘ I trailed off. I seem to remember wanting Jo to step in at that point, asking my mind to supply her voice, which I could then pass on to Mattie in my own. But Jo didn’t come. I was flying solo.

‘Because now I do nothing that makes a difference,’ I said at last, and once again the words astonished me. ‘And I do know you. I’ve eaten your food, I’ve read Ki a story and had her fall asleep in my lap . . . and maybe I saved her life the other day when I grabbed her out of the road.

We’ll never know for sure, but maybe I did. You know what the Chinese say about something like that?’

I didn’t expect an answer, the question was more rhetorical than real, but she surprised me. Not for the last time, either. ‘That if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them.’

‘Yes. It’s also about what’s fair and what’s right, but I think mostly it’s about wanting to be part of something where I make a difference. I look back on the four years since my wife died, and there’s nothing there. Not even a book where Marjorie the shy typist meets a handsome stranger.’

She sat thinking this over, watching as a fully loaded pulptruck snored past on the highway, its headlights glaring and its load of logs swaying from side to side like the hips of an overweight woman. ‘Don’t you root for us,’ she said at last. She spoke in a low, unexpectedly fierce voice.

‘Don’t you root for us like he roots for his team-of-the-week down at the softball field. I need help and I know it, but I won’t have that. I can’t have it. We’re not a game, Ki and me. You understand?’

‘Perfectly.’

‘You know what people in town will say, don’t you?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m a lucky girl, don’t you think? First I marry the son of an extremely rich man, and after he dies, I fall under the protective wing of another rich guy. Next I’ll probably move in with Donald Trump.’

‘Cut it out.’

‘I’d probably believe it myself, if I were on the other side. But I wonder if anyone notices that lucky Mattie is still living in a Modair trailer and can’t afford health insurance. Or that her kid got most of her vaccinations from the County Nurse. My parents died when I was fifteen. I have a brother and a sister, but they’re both a lot older and both out of state. My parents were drunks —

not physically abusive, but there was plenty of the other kinds. It was like growing up in a . . . a roach motel. My dad was a pulper, my mom was a bourbon beautician whose one ambition was to own a Mary Kay pink Cadillac. He drowned in Kewadin Pond. She drowned in her own vomit about six months later. How do you like it so far?’

‘Not very much. I’m sorry.’

‘After Mom’s funeral my brother, Hugh, offered to take me back to Rhode Island, but I could tell his wife wasn’t exactly nuts about having a fifteen-year-old join the family, and I can’t say that I blamed her. Also, I’d just made the jv cheering squad. That seems like supreme diddlyshit now, but it was a very big deal then.’

Of course it had been a big deal, especially to the child of alcoholics. The only one still living at home. Being that last child, watching as the disease really digs its claws in, can be one of the world’s loneliest jobs. Last one out of the sacred ginmill please turn off the lights.

‘I ended up going to live with my aunt Florence, just two miles down the road. It took us about three weeks to discover we didn’t like each other very much, but we made it work for two years.

Then, between my junior and senior years, I got a summer job at Warrington’s and met Lance.

When he asked me to marry him, Aunt Flo refused to give permission. When I told her I was pregnant, she emancipated me so I didn’t need it.’

‘You dropped out of school?’

She grimaced, nodded. ‘I didn’t want to spend six months having people watch me swell up like a balloon. Lance supported me. He said I could take the equivalency test. I did last year. It was easy.

And now Ki and I are on our own. Even if my aunt agreed to help me, what could she do? She works in the Castle Rock Gore-Tex factory and makes about sixteen thousand dollars a year.’

I nodded again, thinking that my last check for French royalties had been about that. My last quarterly check. Then I remembered something Ki had told me on the day I met her.

‘When I was carrying Kyra out of the road, she said that if you were mad, she’d go to her white nana. If your folks are dead, who did she — ‘ Except I didn’t really have to ask; I only had to make one or two simple connections. ‘Rogette Whitmore’s the white nana? Devore’s assistant? But that means . . . ‘

‘That Ki’s been with them. Yes, you bet. Until late last month, I allowed her to visit her grandpa

— and Rogette by association, of course — quite often. Once or twice a week, and sometimes for an overnight. She likes her “Whita poppa” — at least she did at first — and she absolutely adores that creepy woman.’ I thought Mattie shivered in the gloom, although the night was still very warm.

‘Devore called to say he was coming east for Lance’s funeral and to ask if he could see his granddaughter while he was here. Nice as pie, he was, just as if he’d never tried to buy me off when Lance told him we were going to get married.’

‘Did he?’

‘Uh-huh. The first offer was a hundred thousand. That was in August of 1994, after Lance called him to say we were getting married in mid-September. I kept quiet about it. A week later, the offer went up to two hundred thousand.’

‘For what, precisely?’

‘To remove my bitch-hooks and relocate with no forwarding address. This time I did tell Lance, and he hit the roof. Called his old man and said we were going to be married whether he liked it or not. Told him that if he ever wanted to see his grandchild, he had better cut the shit and behave.’

‘With another parent, I thought, that was probably the most reasonable response Lance Devore could have made. I respected him for it. The only problem was that he wasn’t dealing with a reasonable man; he was dealing with the fellow who, as a child, had stolen Scooter Larribee’s new sled.

‘These offers were made by Devore himself, over the telephone. Both when Lance wasn’t around.

Then, about ten days before the wedding, I had a visit from Dickie Osgood. I was to make a call to a number in Delaware, and when I did . . . ‘ Mattie shook her head. ‘You wouldn’t believe it. It’s like something out of one of your books.’

‘May I guess?’

‘If you want.’

‘He tried to buy the child. He tried to buy Kyra.’

Her eyes widened. A scantling moon had come up and I could see that look of surprise well enough.

‘How much?’ I asked. ‘I’m curious. How much for you to give birth, leave Devore’s grandchild with Lance, then scat?’

‘Two million dollars,’ she whispered. ‘Deposited in the bank of my choice, as long as it was west of the Mississippi and I signed an agreement to stay away from her — and from Lance — until at least April twentieth, 2016.’

‘The year Ki turns twenty-one.’

‘Yes.’

‘And Osgood doesn’t know any of the details, so Devore’s skirts remain clean here in town.’

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