100% Compatibility novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: The Return

I did not sleep.

I sat at the kitchen table with Biscuit in my lap and a cold mug of tea.

I watched the window go from black to gray.

At ten to six the front door opened below.

I knew the footsteps, slow and heavy, and the pause at the bottom of the stairs.

He came up to the kitchen doorway and stopped.

He was soaked to the skin.

His hair was plastered to his forehead, and his coat hung off him, wet through, and there was mud on his good shoes.

"It rained," I said.

"It did," said Ronan.

"All day yesterday and all night, and I walked the river from the Esplanade to Watertown and back."

"Did it help?"

"No."

He stayed in the doorway with water running off his sleeves onto the floor.

"I didn't come to ask for anything," he said.

"I came to say I should not have left you alone in that house with the thing she did."

"I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry I stood there in the study and said nothing."

"You said you needed to think."

"I did."

"About what?"

His throat moved.

"About how I would have felt," he said, "if someone had done that to my father."

It was not the answer I had expected.

It was a small answer, almost shy, and it went into me.

I put the cat on the floor.

"You're dripping on the tile," I said.

"I'll clean it."

"Come here."

He crossed the kitchen in three steps, and I stood up and put my hands on his wet lapels.

"Take it off," I said.

"All of it."

He didn't ask what I meant.

He shrugged out of the coat, and I let it drop on the chair.

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