He Locked Me Out and Let Her In novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: A Key With No Request

"It isn't an episode," I said, loudly enough for the back wall to hear.

Sixty faces turned toward me.

"It's a question. Lydia, would you like to tell them who approved every night I spent at Dean's?"

"Honey, please." She dabbed under one eye. "You're upset."

"A hundred and forty-eight times, I tapped a button on an app. A hundred and forty-eight times, you said yes."

I held up my phone and showed the screen to the nearest guests.

Approved by L. Stroud, unit owner.

A woman in a black jacket leaned in and read it, and then read it again.

"Anyone can fake a screenshot," Lydia said, with a small, brave laugh.

"I can't fake the doorman," I said. "Or a lobby full of people who heard you say it. Or the neighbor on fourteen who watched me stand on that mat."

"Lydia is a very giving person," said a man near the front.

"She is," said a voice from the back.

It was Janie.

She walked up the white floor in her plain navy dress, holding her phone out in front of her.

"Four years ago, I got this email from her."

She read it aloud, every word, the Warmly and the Wishing you the very best.

Nobody in the gallery coughed.

"I dated Dean for two years," Janie said. "I never held the door. I asked, and she answered. She chose me the same way she chose Maddie. A hurt dog, a nice man carrying it, a woman who stays."

"That's a lie," Lydia said, very softly.

"Is it?" said another voice.

A tall woman I had never seen stepped out from in front of a red painting.

She had a cropped grey-blonde haircut, and she wore a leather jacket over a plain black dress.

She had been standing there the whole time.

"I was before Janie," she said. "A bird with a broken wing on my front step. A man in a good coat carried it in. He asked for me by name the next morning."

She looked straight at Lydia.

"I rehab birds. I figured out the rest about a month after you sent me the email. I never told anybody, because I thought I'd sound crazy."

Lydia's face did not change.

But the room did.

Sixty people took one step back from the woman in the middle of the floor.

The collector who had bought the biggest painting set his glass down.

"I'd like my deposit returned on Monday," he said, to no one.

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