Chapter 24: The Opening Bid, Again

A week later, on Sunday at one, there were four chairs around the kitchen table on Alder Street.

One of them was borrowed from the neighbor.

Constance had brought two bottles of wine and a pie she'd bought herself, with the sticker still on.

She sat very straight and kept her coat on for the first twenty minutes.

"The table wobbles," she said.

"It does," I said. "I fixed it once. Then Lacey put a book under the leg, and it's been better ever since."

"It's a good book," said Lacey. "It's a paperback about a Duke."

Thatcher ate the grilled cheese I had made him, and it was burnt on one side.

He ate every crumb.

"Fourteen across," said Lacey, with the crossword folded in front of her. "Seven letters. 'Keeps coming back.'"

"I still don't have it," said Thatcher.

Lacey looked at me and then at him.

"Persist," she said.

Nobody said anything.

Constance cleared her throat and reached for the wine.

"Perhaps," she said, "someone should say a few words."

I put down my fork.

The laminated card was in my back pocket.

In my other pocket was a brass key on a green ribbon.

I stood up, and the table wobbled, and Lacey caught the wine.

"I have a toast," I said.

"Oh no," said Thatcher, and he was smiling already.

"Three parts."

"Always three."

"Part one." I held up the card.

"Four years in a call center. Sixty-one percent of no's turned into yeses."

"I learned that most people say no when they mean 'not yet.'"

"Hear, hear," said Constance, rather stiffly.

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