The third was the money, and I answered honestly that I had never been permitted to know anything about the money, and she wrote that down like it was helpful to her, which unsettled me.

The fourth hour was my illness.

She asked me when I first noticed the lump. She asked me why I waited five months.

She asked whether it was true that I had been offered a ride to a clinic by a neighbor and declined it.

That one landed, because it was true — Mrs. Jenkins had offered, and I’d said no, because Margaret had told me that if I embarrassed the family in front of the neighbors she would tell Gavin I’d been going out to meet men, and he was two thousand miles away and lonely and I did not think he would believe her, and I was not willing to find out.

“So you had access to transportation,” Kesler said.