So she waited through three more days. She did not expect her story to change anything as much as to have everything that could be known available to her father. And herself. And no longer believed in perfect moments so only waited for something easier to spot: quiet, the two of them alone, a breadth of time. So Thursday evening sat alone in the living room, her sister and brother both in the kitchen, Prudence using the table for her homework before the warmth of the range and Jamie working over the sheets of addition his sister wrote out for him and then corrected and handed back to him. He had short patience with it and Prudence alone could ignore this and simply keep him working. Norman was in the small office down the hall doing his weeks books, and after a time she rose up and went down through the darkness to the line of light under the shut door and knocked and waited his command to enter and did, shutting the door behind her. He waited wordless, as if knowing something of why she was there, and she lifted the stack of ledgers off the single spare ladderback chair and dusted the caned seat with her palm and sat. And with her sitting Norman laid down his pen and pushed back from the desk to turn his chair three-quarters to face her and laid one knee up over the other, tipping the chair back onto its hind legs just enough to give him the appearance of ease. And she knew he too had been waiting for her. She needed no preamble.

“I came upon her talking to herself. Not just mumbling. Like she was answering somebody. Or more like she was making an argument.”

“You mean like there was somebody there when there wasn’t anyone but her?”

“No. I mean like after something’s happened and you figure out what you really could have said at the time but didn’t.”

He nodded. “When was this?”

“After she came back up here from going south.”

“Yes,” he said. “I figured that. I meant when after?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want to know,” he said, “if it was recent.”

“You mean just before she hanged herself.”

“Yes.”

“Why’s it important when?”

“I’m trying to learn her state of mind.”

“You think you can understand it then?”

“Perhaps. When was it you heard her talking?”

“I think it’s more important what she was saying. It was maybe only a week or two after she got home.”

“I see. Where was everybody else?”

“Out the house. She had no idea I was around. And I didn’t show myself. I just listened.”

“You weren’t trying to sneak around other times hoping to catch her at it?”

“It was an accident. And just because I didn’t tell her I’d heard her going on when there wasn’t anybody there doesn’t mean I was being a sneak about it. I thought it was private to her. Also, it a little bit gave me the willies. And I don’t understand all these questions. It’s like you think you already know what I’ve got to tell you. But I don’t believe you do.”