The Woman in the Basement
She demonstrated: a thumb rubbing a knuckle. “I do that.”
“You do.”
“He didn’t ask me for anything,” Phoebe said. “You know what he did? He asked me about school. And when I said I liked biology he asked three more questions about biology and he didn’t know the answers and he just kept asking.”
She was quiet for a mile. “He didn’t say sorry. I thought he’d say sorry the whole time and he didn’t say it once.”
“Did you want him to?”
“No,” said my daughter. “That’s what I found out. If he’d said it I’d have had to do something with it.”