Chapter 8: The Diary

Chris looked at his mother for a long time.

Then he picked up the pastry box and walked out.

We listened to him go down the stairs.

His father unfolded the newspaper again and smoothed it flat with both hands.

"He'll come back," he said quietly. "He always comes back here. He just never comes back different."

His mother walked me to my car with a foil tray of leftovers I couldn't eat.

"You'll call me," she said. "Not about him. About you."

"I'll call you."

On Wednesday I moved into a furnished one-bedroom on Tremont Street, three blocks from the club.

It had a bay window and a radiator that clanked.

The neighbor across the hall introduced herself by asking if I was the lawyer from the news.

By Thursday night I'd stopped unpacking and started living at the office.

At eleven o'clock the Whitford Lane floor was dark except for the small conference room at the end.

Finn and I sat on opposite sides of the table with my diary open between us.

He'd come straight from closing the club, still in his polo, with two bags of Thai food.

"No dairy," he'd said, before I could ask. "I asked the guy three times. He thinks I'm insane."

The legal pad from court three had turned into a spreadsheet.

Three weddings.

My promotion dinner last March, when Jade got food poisoning in the restaurant bathroom before the entrees came.

My twenty-eighth birthday, when she sprained her wrist at a spin class and needed Chris to drive her home from Tribeca.

Five big days.

Five emergencies.

Five times she was fine by midnight.

Finn pushed the pad back across the table.

"I don't want you to use the weddings."

I looked up.

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