Death Row novel · Chapter 13 of 24

Chapter 13: The Night of the Fire

Seven years before that dayroom, on the last night of my old life, Blaine made me soup.

He stood at the stove in the lake house kitchen in his shirtsleeves and stirred it for a long time.

I sat at the table with my coat already on.

"Marlene called the home," he said. "Your mother had a bad evening. She asked for you twice."

"She doesn't ask for me anymore."

"She did tonight."

I believed him, because I had no reason not to.

I was twenty-seven.

We had been married two years, and I still liked watching him cook.

A pair of work boots stood by the front door, big ones, with gray plaster dried on the toes.

They were not Blaine's.

"Whose are those?" I said.

"A client's. He left them after the walkthrough."

He ladled soup into a bowl and didn't turn around.

"I'll drop them off tomorrow."

I ate standing up, because he was in a hurry to get me on the road.

He drove.

It was two hours to the care home, and he didn't turn on the radio.

He kept his hand over mine on the seat the whole way, which he hadn't done in months.

"You're quiet," I said.

"I'm thinking about you."

"That's a nice thing to say about a car ride."

"It's true, though."

We got there at a quarter past nine.

The night aide buzzed us in, and I signed my name in the visitor book at the front desk.

Blaine signed under me.

Then he leaned on the desk and tapped it twice with two fingers, and smiled at nobody.

He stayed twenty-five minutes.

He sat on the edge of my mother's bed and held her hand.

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