His voice was thick. “She sure got paid back nice.”
“Don’t think about that.”
For some moments he didn’t speak. And then, very low in his throat, “It was my fault.”
She looked at him. She frowned.
He said, “I knew she didn’t belong here. I should have taken her away.”
“Where?”
“Anywhere,” he said. “Just to get her away from this mess. This goddamn street.”
“You don’t like the street?”
“Look at it.” He pointed to the rutted paving, the choked gutter, the littered doorsteps. “What’s there to like?”
“She liked it,” Rita said.