Chapter 13: What She Carried

I told him all of it, standing in my own kitchen in a robe.

He didn't sit down again. He stayed against the counter with the petition in one fist.

"She came to the shop on a Thursday," I said. "Four days before."

"She never told me she went to your shop that week."

"She came after closing. She didn't want you to hear about it from a driver."

He said nothing.

"She put the envelope on my workbench. She said she'd signed it, and she was scared to tell you."

"Scared of me?"

"Scared of your face." My voice shook. "She said you'd go quiet and look at her, and she couldn't stand the quiet."

His jaw moved.

"She said she wasn't in love with you anymore. She said she'd tried for a year."

"Stop."

"You asked for all of it."

"I know what I asked."

He turned his back to me and put his palm flat on the cabinet.

I kept talking, because stopping would have been worse.

"She asked me to keep it until you were ready. She asked me not to tell her mother."

"And you said yes."

"I said yes. Then for four days I watched you at dinner, planning her birthday."

Ansel made a sound in his throat.

"On the twenty-eighth I called her. I couldn't do it anymore."

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