Chapter 23: One Rule

"Yes," Rhodri said.

He said it before I had finished the last word.

"Yes. Yes. Is that enough times? I can do more."

"Let go of my hands," I said, laughing, "and I'll hear you better."

"I'm not letting go of anything."

A hundred and forty people roared.

The sound hit the black trusses and came down on us.

Somebody banged a pipe on the concrete, and then everybody did, and Leontine was screaming "I knew it" with both arms in the air.

The foreman took off his cap and threw it.

It landed in the glory hole, and he said a word I had never heard him say.

Rhodri pulled me up off the floor and into his arms, and he kissed me in front of all of them.

It was not a careful kiss.

It tasted of salt, and somewhere in the middle of it I realized we were both crying.

That night I sat at my mother's desk with the yellow pad.

A bottle of the cheap red she used to keep in the bottom drawer stood open beside it.

Rhodri sat across from me with his sleeves rolled up and his tie in his pocket.

"We need a lawyer," he said.

"No."

"Juliana. We're about to put our names on a contract."

"We're about to put our names on one page."

I tore it off the pad and wrote in my own slanted hand, in block capitals, in blue ink.

The pen scratched in the quiet.

I had put the rule at the top and left the rest of the paper empty.

I turned it around and slid it across the desk.

It said, RULE ONE: ASK ME. BOTH OF US. EVERY TIME. EVEN WHEN YOU THINK YOU KNOW THE ANSWER.

Underneath was a blank line for each of us.

"That's all?" he said.

"That's all."

"There's no clause for the shares or the house. There's no exit."

"There isn't one."

"No twelve months."

"No months," I said. "Nobody's leaving. Nobody's obeying anything. We just ask."

He picked up the page.

I watched him read it.

He read it from the top to the bottom, and then from the bottom to the top.

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