Never Yours Again novel · Chapter 22 of 24

Chapter 22: The Right Size

Lucy's POV

My mother was waiting in the hall lobby at seven the next morning, in a quilted coat, with a rolling suitcase and a thermos.

She had ridden the overnight bus from Dayton, because she didn't trust the plane after the news.

"I saw it on my phone," she said, instead of hello. "Four hundred people, and a ring the size of a doorknob. Are you hurt?"

"No."

"Did you eat?"

"Mom."

"That means no."

She hugged me hard, the way she did at funerals, and I smelled her lavender hand cream.

Over my shoulder, she saw Ellis.

He stood three feet away with his hands folded in front of him.

She let go of me and looked him over from his shoes to the gray at his temple.

"And this is?"

"Ellis Flaherty."

"The friend."

"Yes."

"The one who sat at your table every Sunday and watched you make a fool of yourself."

"Mom!"

"It's a fair question," said Ellis. "Mrs. Tannen, I did."

My mother raised her eyebrows.

"You knew who really gave you that jacket, Lucy says. You knew the whole time."

"Yes."

"And you didn't say."

"No, ma'am. I was a coward, and I was wrong."

She looked at him for a long, flat moment.

"Well," she said. "That's the first honest thing a man in this city has told me."

She unscrewed the thermos and poured him a cup of her terrible tea.

"Drink that. You look like you haven't slept since the Bush administration."

He drank it.

I watched him do it without a flicker.

Right there in the lobby, I loved him a little more, and I wasn't ready to say so.

Ten days later I signed a lease.

It was a one-bedroom on the fourth floor of an old building in Ravenswood, with a radiator that knocked and a window over the alley.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Never Yours Again from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.