Goodbye to the Man Who Betrayed Us novel · Chapter 26 of 32

Chapter 26: Second Night

I looked down at him for a long moment.

Then I turned my back on him, the way I had in the hospital hallway in March.

I heard the officer move him along.

I heard the ballroom doors swing shut behind him.

Rafael was waiting at the bottom of the stage steps with his hand out.

I took it.

The valet had parked Rafael's tow truck across three spaces, between a Bentley and a Tesla.

"Sir," the valet said, handing back the keys. "Respectfully. Never again."

"That's fair," Rafael said.

He boosted me up into the cab in my long green dress.

Raymond had gone home in the board chair's car, because the board chair had offered and Raymond wanted to watch him drive.

We crossed the Bay Bridge at midnight with the windows down.

My phone wouldn't stop.

The DA had released the video at ten.

It was on every channel and every phone in California.

GALA STUNNER, one headline said. LANGFORD HEIR, STEPMOTHER ARRESTED IN FULTON STREET HIT-AND-RUN.

Under it was the still frame I'd chosen.

My mother in the crosswalk, holding her cake, looking up.

They'd all used it.

"Turn it off," Rafael said gently.

I turned it off.

Twelve Stools was lit up at half past midnight.

Every light, the sign, the pie case.

The gate was up and the door was propped open with a bucket.

Inside, the whole counter was full.

The deacon and his wife. The bakery sisters, still in their aprons. The mailman. The laundromat lady.

The young mechanic was standing on stool seven with his arms in the air.

Stool Nine sat on stool one.

When we walked in, nobody said anything.

They just stood up.

Every one of them, like they had for Vivian in March.

Only this time they were clapping.

Stool Nine's wife had made two pans of rice pudding.

The deacon prayed over them for a long time.

Nobody minded.

Raymond came in at one, from the board chair's car, and the room cheered for him too.

He waved it off and went straight upstairs to check on Lily.

I went up behind him.

She was asleep in my mother's bed with the plastic shield over her right eye, both whales and the owl.

The laundromat lady had done the ten o'clock drops.

The alarm on my phone said the next ones were due at two.

"I'll do the two," Raymond whispered. "And the four. And the six."

"I haven't spent a night away from her since the surgery."

"I know you haven't. That's seven weeks."

He took my phone out of my hand and set the alarm on his own.

"Go on," he said. "I know how to put drops in an eye. I watched you do it four hundred times."

"Raymond."

"Go, Grace. Before I get sentimental."

I went down the back stairs and out into the lot.

Rafael was sitting on the bottom of the twelve wooden steps in his rented suit, his tie pulled loose.

He stood up when he saw me.

"She okay?"

"She's asleep. Raymond has the drops."

"Raymond has the drops," he said slowly.

"Raymond has all the drops. Till morning."

He looked at me in the light from the top of the stairs.

He looked at the green dress, the gold hoops, the heels I was holding in one hand because my feet had quit at the hotel.

"I didn't get to tell you," he said. "In there. You looked like a queen."

"I looked like a woman who almost threw up on a stage."

"A queen who almost threw up."

I laughed.

He took the heels out of my hand.

He went up the stairs ahead of me and opened the door, and then stood there holding it.

"I can't do your zipper," he said. "I watched the sisters do it. It took two of them."

"It takes one person who isn't scared of it."

"I'm a little scared of it."

"You parked a tow truck next to a Bentley tonight."

"The valet did that. I just watched."

I walked past him into the room.

The lamp was on.

The space heater was ticking.

He'd made the bed, which he never did.

I turned my back to him and pulled my hair out of the way.

"One person," I said. "Not scared."

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