How to Say Our Final Goodbye novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Lantern Room

My legs wanted to run.

Every part of me remembered the cold and the noise and the long white quiet after.

I didn't run.

I walked straight toward the car.

One step, then another, across the gravel, until the front bumper was touching my knees.

Kirsten's smile went a little stiff.

"What are you doing?"

"Go around," I said.

"There's no room to go around."

"Then back up."

She revved it again, louder.

I put both palms flat on the warm white hood and leaned on it.

I looked at her through the windshield and didn't blink.

She blinked first.

She threw it in reverse and swung the back end out across the lawn, tearing two long brown stripes through the grass.

Then she shot out the gate.

I stood there with my hands still out in the air where the hood had been.

Up in the green dining room window, Wyeth's grandmother was watching with her cane in her hand.

She lifted it to me, very slightly.

I had to sit in my car for ten minutes before I could drive.

On Tuesday, I pulled the old banquet files from the basement and started planning a wedding.

On Wednesday, Wyeth Wainscott walked into the Lantern Room at four in the afternoon with his tie in his pocket.

"What are you doing here?" I asked from the top of a ladder.

"Checking on my investment."

"Your investment is fine. Go invest somewhere else."

He looked up at the lanterns, then at me.

"Which one's broken?"

"How do you know one's broken?"

"You've been staring at it like it owes you money."

It was the twelfth lantern from the stage, the brass collar bent.

He held the ladder while I took it down.

Then he sat on the edge of the stage with it across his knees and bent the brass back into shape with his bare hands and a pair of pliers he borrowed from the engineer.

"Bankers can't do that," I said.

"My grandfather fixed clocks. He made me hold the screws."

He came back on Thursday, and stayed.

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