The Man Who Can't Let Go novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Ten Days

The bindery in Portland smelled of paste and old leather, and the bench by the window was exactly as Virginia had left it.

The owner met her at the door in an apron stiff with glue, a small woman in her seventies with ink on her chin.

"You came back," the woman said. "I told the girls you would, in the spring or never."

"I came to close it," Virginia said.

"Did you?"

She walked to the bench and ran her hand along the edge of the pressboard.

Her bone folder lay where she had set it, beside a cracked atlas that had been waiting for her three years.

"I don't know," she said.

For four days she worked at the bench from eight until the light went.

She resewed the atlas, and the spine held, and she felt something loosen under her ribs that she had not known was tight.

On the fifth day the mail came.

The bindery owner dropped it on the bench without comment, and on top was a plain white envelope with a Fenner Street postmark.

The handwriting was his.

It was square and a little heavy.

She opened it with the bone folder.

Ginny. It's Tuesday. I bought the wrench. Your father rang it up and put it back on the hook.

The bakery woman asked if you were coming home. I said you were deciding.

She said that's the best kind of coming home.

I haven't called. It's harder than the lawyers. T.

She read it standing, then sat down on a stool and read it again.

She put it flat on the bench next to the atlas.

On the eighth day the bindery owner brought her tea.

"I've a proposal," the woman said. "I'm not young. I'd like a partner who isn't afraid of a hard spine."

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