Chapter 21: Clause Twelve

I unfolded the yellow sheet.

The back was covered in square capitals, pressed hard into the paper, with one line near the bottom.

12. WHEN THIS STOPS BEING A CONTRACT, BURN IT AND SAY SO OUT LOUD.

I read it twice, the way I had read clause four.

"You wrote this while a priest put on a cardigan," I said.

"The chaplain wasn't a priest."

"While a chaplain put on a cardigan."

"I wrote it before he finished the second button."

"You thought it would stop being one."

"I thought it might."

Emerson took off her watch and put it on the blotter.

"I wanted a way to know."

"And does it?"

"You tell me."

I thought about the answer for as long as it took to cross the desk.

"It stopped being a contract in the pajamas," I said.

"The first night. You laughed at me and then said sorry."

"That's too early."

"It was the first night."

"It was the first hour," she said, and her voice cracked down the middle, and she came around the desk.

She kissed me hard, with both hands in my coat.

"Take me home," she said against my mouth. "I want to burn it in the sink."

The vans had gone from outside the ice house, because the arrest had given them something better.

Emerson stood at the long kitchen counter with the legal pad in one hand.

The other held a stove lighter.

Beside her sat a steel mixing bowl, and in the bowl lay my borrowed grey sweater.

"Say it out loud," I said.

"This was a contract," she said, to the bowl. "It's over."

She lit the corner of the pad.

The yellow paper curled and blackened.

Clause four went first, then nine and eleven, with twelve running ahead of the flame.

She tipped the burning pad into the bowl and laid the sweater on top.

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