Chapter 13: May First

Matt took the letter out of Carrie's hand.

He read it by the flashlight with snow landing on the page.

Then he folded it and put it in the pocket with my glasses.

"Seventeen days," he said.

"Matt, I'm sorry," Carrie said. "I should've opened it this morning."

"Wouldn't have changed the date."

He took my glasses back out, wiped them on the inside of his shirt, and put them on my face himself.

His thumbs stayed on my temples one second too long.

Then we walked up the slope in a row, nobody talking, three sets of wet boots.

Carrie spread the books out on the kitchen table at midnight.

The works had eleven thousand dollars in the bank.

"We owe two hundred and ninety," she said. "So we're short two hundred and seventy-nine. Give or take a kidney."

I pulled one of the ledgers toward me and started a list on the back of an envelope.

"My car," I said.

Matt looked up.

"It's paid off. It's worth twenty, maybe."

"Then how do you get around?"

"You have a truck. You've never once let me carry anything anyway."

I kept writing.

Then I stopped, and looked at my right hand.

My grandmother's ring was a small diamond in old gold, worn thin on one side from sixty years of her dishes.

I turned it once on my finger.

"No," Matt said.

"It's mine to sell."

"I know it's yours. That's why no."

"It's a ring, Matt. The furnace is eleven jobs."

He held my eyes for a long moment.

Then he looked down at the table and didn't argue again, and that was worse.

Carrie went home at one.

The house went quiet except for the radiator.

I stood outside his door in the dark hall in my wet socks for a full minute before I knocked.

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