Love Is Gone, So Am I novel · Chapter 5 of 24

Chapter 5: The Silence Clause

I'd slept in that bed for seven years.

I knew exactly which side sagged.

"Take the left," I said. "The right side has a spring that gets you in the kidney around three a.m. He's never noticed. He sleeps through everything."

Vanessa's smile slipped a quarter of an inch.

"And wash the duvet cover before you use it," I said. "I didn't have time."

She walked out without answering.

Behind me, the girl with the tray of wedding bands burst out laughing, then clapped a hand over her mouth.

"Sorry," she said. "Sorry. That was just really good."

Her fiancé bought the plain gold bands anyway. He said they wanted the ones from the shop where that happened.

Avis rang them up without a word. When they'd gone, she put the cash in the drawer and looked at me.

"You'll do," she said.

Davis came up himself on Thursday.

He didn't send the driver. He drove his own car, the gray Audi, and parked it across two spaces outside the diner.

I was on my knees on the shop floor, scrubbing eleven years of dust out of the boards, when he knocked on the glass.

He looked tired.

His tie was loose.

He'd shaved badly, which he never did.

For one second my heart did the old thing.

Then I saw the envelope in his hand.

I went out onto the sidewalk instead of letting him in.

Front Street was busy.

The ferry had just come in.

"You look good," he said.

"I look like I've been scrubbing floors."

"You look good doing it." He smiled. It was the smile he used when he'd forgotten a reservation. "Willa. Can we be adults about this?"

"I filed on Monday."

"I know. Mother's lawyer called me." He held the envelope out. "This is from both of us. It's fair. It's more than fair."

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