Chapter 20: The Loft Door

I drove to Hallie's and woke her up.

She opened the door in her scrub pants with her red hair flat on one side.

She looked at my face and went straight to the bedroom.

She came back with a white box from her sock drawer.

"I figured you'd want these tonight," she said.

I opened it on the hall table.

My mother's pearls lay in the tissue, small and creamy, with the old silver clasp.

I put them on in the hallway mirror.

My hands were steady for the first time in a week.

"Go get him," said Hallie. "Or I'll drive."

It was after midnight when I got back to the boat shop.

The van was in the yard.

Cal was sitting on the top stair outside the loft door in his jacket.

His elbows were on his knees, and the keys hung from one hand.

He looked up when I came across the gravel.

He didn't stand.

"I walked to the end of the road," he said. "I got there, and I thought, she's right."

"I wasn't right."

"You were a little right."

"So were you." I stopped on the step below him.

"You sat in Duluth, Cal. I sat in a plastic chair."

"We both sat still while somebody else wrote our lives."

He looked at the pearls at my throat, and something in his face gave.

"I should have driven back that week," he said.

"I should have stood in the hospital lot until you came out to me."

"I should have knocked on your door the day after the funeral."

"You were grieving."

"So were you." I put my hand on his jaw. "I'm done with my three rules. I'm asking you to stay."

"For how long?"

"I don't have a number."

He closed his eyes.

Then he stood, and put his arms around my waist, and picked me up off the step.

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