under his ear and said, "Well," and made him a bag of frozen peas, and that was all. What he told her on Saturday night, sitting at the kitchen table while she ironed her uniform for Monday, was the other part. That Shug knew. That Shug had always known. That Shug had stood at the curb after dark looking for it.
Ruthann put the iron down on its heel. It ticked as it cooled. She looked at the wall for a while, at the calendar from Dickey's Feed with a picture of a red barn in snow.
"I told you not to carry it in front of him," she said.
"I know."
"Why did you?"
He had been asking himself that for a year and a half. "I think I wanted him to see it."
She nodded slowly. She did not seem angry. She seemed tired, the way she always seemed on Saturday nights, but there was something else under it, too, something careful.
"I'm going to tell you something," she said. "And I want you to sit with it a minute before you say anything. All right?"
"All right."
"Berniece Kettleman saw me take that bat out of the trash."
Garrick stared at her.
"She was standing at the upstairs window," Ruthann said. "In the bedroom. I looked up when I got to the car and she was there. Behind the curtain. She'd been watching the whole time." Ruthann smoothed the collar of her uniform on the ironing board with the flat of her hand. "I thought that was it. I thought I'd be out of a job by Friday. I didn't sleep. I had it all worked out, which bills I'd let go first."
"What happened?"
"Friday I came in, and there was an envelope on the kitchen counter with my pay in it, like always. And there was an extra ten dollars in it. And there was a note." Ruthann's mouth did something complicated. "It said, 'For the extra trash.' That's all. In her handwriting. She never said one word about it to me. Not then, not since. Almost four years. The ten dollars has been in the envelope every Friday since."
The kitchen was quiet except for the refrigerator humming.
"So she knew," Garrick said.