Dolores Claiborne - Stephen King [95]
So that was the bugger, and the inquest the next day wasn't nothing compared to it. McAuliffe ast me many of the same questions, and they were hard questions, but they didn't have no power over me anymore, and we both knew it. My one tear was all very well, but McAuliffe's questions-plus the fact that everyone could see he was pissed like a bear at me-went a long way toward startin the talk which has run on the island ever since. Oh well; there would have been some talk no matter what, ain't that right?
The verdict was death by misadventure. McAuliffe didn't like it, and at the end he read his findins in a dead-level voice, without ever lookin up once, but what he said was official enough: Joe fell down the well while drunk, had prob'ly called for help for quite awhile without gettin an answer, then tried to climb out on his own hook. He got most of the way to the top, then put his weight on the wrong stone. It pulled free, bashed him in the head hard enough to fracture his skull (not to mention his dentures), and knocked him back down to the bottom again, where he died.
Maybe the biggest thing-and I never realized this until later-was they couldn't find no motive to hang on me. Of course, the people in town (and Dr McAuliffe too, I have no doubt) thought that if I had done it, I did it to get shut of him beatin me, but all by itself that didn't carry enough weight. Only Selena and Mr Pease knew how much motive I'd really had, and no one, not even smart old Dr McAuliffe, thought of questionin Mr Pease. He didn't come forward on his own hook, either. If he had've, our little talk in The Chatty Buoy would've come out, and he'd most likely have been in trouble with the bank. I'd talked him into breakin the rules, after all.
As for Selena well, I think Selena tried me in her own court. Every now n then I'd see her eyes on me, dark n squally, and in my mind I'd hear her askin, Did you do anything to him? Did you, Mamma? Is it my fault? Am I the one who has to pay?
I think she did pay-that's the worst part. The little island girl who was never out of the state of Maine until she went to Boston for a swim-meet when she was eighteen has become a smart, successful career-woman in New York City there was an article about her in the New York Times two years ago, did you know that? She writes for all those magazines and still finds time to write me once a week but they feel like duty-letters, just like the phone-calls twice a month feel like dutycalls. I think the calls n the chatty little notes are the way she pays her heart to be quiet about how she don't ever come back here, about how she's cut her ties with me. Yes, I think she paid, all right; I think the one who was the most blameless of all paid the most, and that she's payin still.
She's forty-four years old, she's never married, she's too thin (I can see that in the pitchers she sometimes sends), and I think she drinks-I've heard it in her voice more'n once when she calls. I got an idear that might be one of the reasons she don't come home anymore; she doesn't want me to see her drinkin like her father drank. Or maybe because she's afraid of what she might say if she had one too many while I was right handy. What she might ask.
But never mind; it's all water over the dam now. I