His Love Was My Poison novel · Chapter 16 of 48

Chapter 16: The Old Name

"I'll come," I said. "But first you're going to tell me about the name."

He didn't pretend not to understand.

He looked at the marsh for a long time.

The wind off the water was cold enough to sting.

"The first winter in Alaska," he said. "I was thirty. Everything was gone. My father, my mother, the house. And Eleanor had left me the week it happened."

"I know that part."

"You don't know this part." He swallowed. "One night I was half asleep and I called you Nora. By mistake. It was what I used to call her."

I didn't move.

"And you smiled," he said. "You thought it was a pet name. You said nobody had ever given you one."

I remembered that night.

The woodstove ticking.

His arm around me.

How happy I'd been.

"So you kept saying it," I said.

"I kept saying it."

"For eight years."

"Yes."

"Say why."

He closed his eyes.

"Because when I said it, I could pretend I hadn't lost everything."

The wind pushed at my coat.

"Keep going," I said. "Year three."

"She came to Greely with her tour. She found me after the show. She cried and said she'd made a mistake." His jaw worked. "I went to her hotel room that night. You were at home. You'd made dinner."

"Pot roast," I said. "I remember. You said the exercise ran late."

He flinched.

"Then the candles," I said.

"She said my mother would have wanted a light kept for her. She said she'd make them like Mom taught her. I thought it was the kindest thing anyone had done for me in years."

"And you asked me to burn them."

"I asked you to burn them."

"By my bed."

"By our bed."

"Then Kit," I said.

"Then Kit. She said she'd go to the papers if I didn't give him my name. A brand-new general with a secret son, and my father's name still a joke. So I gave her the stone instead. I thought it was just a stone."

"And the day before, I called you from the clinic."

"And I told you I was in a briefing." His voice broke completely. "Lenora, I'm so sorry."

I let him stand there in it.

I had waited seven years to hear every word of that, and I'd thought it would feel like something.

It just felt cold.

"I believe you," I said. "That's not the same as forgiving you."

"I know."

"I'll be at the cemetery. For the stone. Not for you."

"I know," he said again.

I walked back to the van.

Posy was in the back seat with her headphones in, pretending not to have watched through the window.

Micah started the engine and didn't ask me a single question all the way to Pittsburgh.

Somewhere near Breezewood he reached over without looking and put his hand on my knee, palm up.

I laced my numb fingers through his.

We dropped Posy at her best friend's for a sleepover she had scheduled herself, three weeks in advance, with a typed itinerary.

"Don't wait up," she told her father. "And Len, he hasn't eaten a vegetable since Maryland."

My apartment was the third floor of an old brick house two streets from the warehouse.

Micah had carried boxes up the stairs the week I moved in.

He'd never once been up them since.

He stood in my kitchen with his hands in his pockets and looked around.

"There are no candles," he said.

"I've never owned one since."

"Not even a birthday candle?"

"Posy brings her own."

He nodded slowly, like that told him something he'd been wondering for four years.

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