Contract Over: You're Free to Go novel · Chapter 23 of 24
Chapter 23: Free to Go
We stood on the hotel steps in the cold with the doors shut behind us.
The valet who had once asked if I wanted a car looked at us and found something to do at the curb.
Margot pulled her hand out of mine.
I let it go.
"Before you ask me anything," she said, "I need to do something. I've owed it to you for a month."
"Margot."
"Please."
She reached up to the collar of her blouse and drew out a thin gold chain.
The ring hung on the end of it, the plain band I had left on the silver tray.
She had gone back for it that night, before the quartet finished playing.
She had worn it against her skin for a month.
She worked the clasp open with unsteady fingers and put the ring in the middle of my palm.
Then she closed my fingers over it with both her hands.
"Contract's over," she said.
The wind pulled at her hair.
"No claims, no clause, no house, no money. Archie's school is paid, and so is his doctor, and neither is tied to you. The building is Timothy's. Nothing I own is a lock on a door anymore."
I could not speak.
"You're free to go," she said.
She said it in my words, to my face, exactly as I had said them to her, and her voice broke on the last one.
"I'm not saying it to be cruel. I'm saying it because you said it first, and it was true, and you never got to hear it back from someone who meant it kindly. If you walk down these steps, I won't follow. I won't send anyone. I'll see you at Archie's birthday if you let me, and I will sit wherever Timothy tells me to."
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