Five Years Outside Their Photos, So I Finally Walked Out Forever novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Locked Out

Her key no longer works and her things are boxed on the porch in front of the neighbors; Gavin posts that his wife is unwell.

"I have somewhere to go," I told Elias, and I got into my car before he could ask where.

It was true.

Teagan Barrow had been telling me for five years that her spare room had my name on it.

She opened her door at the Anchor Tap apartments with a dish towel over her shoulder and looked at the cat carrier, the quilt and my face.

"Finally," she said.

That was all.

She made tea I didn't drink, and she put Mustard on her bed, where he inspected the pillows.

I slept for ten hours.

When I woke up there were a dozen messages from Gavin.

The first said, "Come home, babe, we'll talk."

The sixth said, "Mum is very upset."

The last said, "I'm not angry. I just want you to be reasonable."

I put the phone in a drawer.

"I need the rest of my things," I told Teagan over toast. "My laptop. My clothes. My grandmother's recipe tin."

"Say no more." She grabbed her keys. "I'm driving the truck."

We pulled up to the marine office a little after ten.

The harbor was bright and busy, with Sunday sailors on the dock and a line at the coffee cart.

The apartment door above the office was open.

My things were on the outside landing.

They were in cardboard boxes, with the flaps folded in and my name on each one in black marker.

Not Willa.

Not Mrs. Bradlee.

"Tennant," Teagan read off the top box. "She wrote your maiden name like a return address."

A woman in a gray cleaning smock came out of the apartment with another box and set it down without looking at me.

She worked for Colleen.

She had worked for Colleen for years, and she'd never once been unkind to me, and she wouldn't meet my eyes now.

"I'm sorry, Mrs. Bradlee," she said. "I was told to have them down by ten."

"Don't call me that," I said gently. "And it's not your fault."

I took my key out of my pocket and tried it in the door.

It slid in and wouldn't turn.

The lock was new and the brass was still bright.

Across the street a man walking a spaniel had stopped to watch.

Two women outside the coffee cart had stopped too.

I understood that Colleen had arranged this for ten on a Sunday morning on purpose, when the whole harbor would see.

She wanted me standing on that landing in front of everyone, holding a key that opened nothing.

"Okay," I said.

"Okay?" Teagan said.

"Okay." I put the key in the top box. "Let's load the truck."

I carried the first box down myself.

My shoulder was shaking, but my voice wasn't.

"Good morning," I said to the man with the spaniel. "I'm moving out. Have a nice Sunday."

He actually said, "You too."

Behind me, a boat engine cut off.

A man came up the harbor road at an odd, uneven stride with a bad left knee and a camera case over his shoulder.

The gray cap was gone.

Without it I could see his face, and it was Gavin's face, only older and thinner and unsmiling.

Elias Bradlee didn't say hello.

He walked up the stairs, lifted the two heaviest boxes and brought them down.

"You don't have to," I said.

"I know." He put them in Teagan's truck bed and slid them to the back.

Teagan watched him from the driver's side with her eyebrows high enough to leave her face.

"Who's this?" she asked me.

"Gavin's brother."

"The one in Portland?"

"Apparently he's here for the weekend."

"I'm here until Founders' Day," Elias said, and then looked like he wished he hadn't.

"Why?" I asked.

"My mother asked." He shut the tailgate. "She wants a portrait for the harbor hall. Her sixty-third birthday and the town's founding in one picture."

"Congratulations," I said.

"It's not a gift."

His eyes went to the upstairs window, where the curtain was moving.

Gavin was up there, watching us through the glass.

He didn't come out.

Elias turned back to me, and his voice dropped.

"I have a spare room over the studio on Marlin Street. The door locks from the inside."

I thought of Teagan's couch and Teagan's pillows and Mustard on her bed, and the best friend who had picked up my whole life without being asked.

"I'm fine," I said. "Thank you."

He nodded once, like I had given the answer he expected, and stepped back.

We drove away with seven boxes in the truck bed.

At the first red light Teagan's phone buzzed on the dash.

She read it, and her whole face changed.

"Willa," she said. "Don't look at yours."

I looked.

Gavin had posted a photo to his account, of the two of us at our wedding, cropped so that only his half of the picture showed.

The caption said, "My wife hasn't been well lately. Please give us privacy while she gets help."

Underneath it, Sabrina had already written, "Praying for you both."

Eighty-four likes.

Twelve comments.

And the top one, from a woman I'd sat next to at church for five years, said, "Poor Gavin, he's been so patient with her."

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