I said desperately, ‘Maybe it wasn’t worth destroying it.’
Stern leaned forward and pointed his pipe at me. ‘ It was because it made you do what you did. After the fact, maybe things look different. But when you were moved to do it, the important thing was to destroy Miss Kew and regain this thing you’d had before. I don’t see why and neither do you.’
‘How are we going to find out?’
‘Well, let’s get to the most unpleasant part, if you’re up to it.’
I lay down. ‘I’m ready.’
‘All right. Tell me everything that happened just before you killed her.’
I fumbled through that last day, trying to taste the food, hear the voices. A thing came and went and came again: it was the crisp feeling of the sheets. I thrust it away because it was at the beginning of that day, but it came back again, and I realized it was at the end, instead.
I said, ‘What I just told you, all that about the children doing things other people’s way instead of their own, and Baby not talking, and everyone happy about it, and finally that I had to kill Miss Kew. It took a long time to get to that, and a long time to start doing it. I guess I lay in bed and thought for four hours before I got up again. It was dark and quiet. I went out of the room and down the hall and into Miss Kew’s bedroom and killed her.’
‘How?’
‘That’s all there is!’ I shouted, as loud as I could. Then I quieted down. ‘It was awful dark… it still is. I don’t know. I don’t want to know. She did love us. I know she did. But I had to kill her.’