Regret is the Punishment novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: Glass

I found Jerome where I knew he would be, on the stool outside the burn unit.

He had not gone to the apartment he had rented, because Darla was on the other side of that door.

He sat with his elbows on his knees and his head down, in the same borrowed gray shirt.

I stopped three steps away.

"I got the papers," I said.

He didn't look up.

"I'm not going to fight them."

That made him lift his head.

His eyes were rimmed red.

He had a smear of ash under one ear that nobody had told him about.

"Say that again."

"The divorce. The custody. I won't contest any of it. Give me a pen."

He stared at me.

"I don't understand you," he said.

"There's nothing to understand. You should have her."

"She needs somebody who didn't sit in a car."

He stood up.

He is six foot two, and in the narrow hall he blocked the light.

"You think this is generous," he said.

"No."

"You think you can hand me a signature and feel clean."

"I don't think I'll ever feel clean."

"Good."

He took a pen from the chest pocket of his shirt and snapped the cap off.

Then he held out the form.

I signed the last page against the wall, with a nurse pretending to read a chart six feet away.

My hand shook on the line for respondent.

"There's something else," I said. "The insurance on the house."

"It's in both our names."

"I know. I've signed my half over. A lawyer at the bank drew it up this morning."

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