Chapter 17: Thirty-Seven

Security walked Cissy off the stage through the side door.

She went without a sound, with her head down.

The guests began to talk all at once, and Lydia stood alone under the lights with a dead microphone in her hand.

Hayden was already at her elbow.

"Not here," Lydia said.

He took her through the kitchen corridor into the club manager's empty office and closed the door.

The laptop sat on the desk where the engineer had left it.

"Month five," Lydia said.

"Lydia."

"Play it."

He looked at the machine for a long time.

Then he clicked the file with his own initial on it.

Cissy's voice came first, gentle and unhurried.

*"I could book you a flight, Hayden. Port Alder is a day away. If you want to see her, you could be there by tomorrow night."*

Hayden's voice answered.

It was slurred, and it was bitter, and it was unmistakably his.

*"She signed in nine days."*

*"I know."*

*"Nine days, Cissy. If she wanted me she knows where I live. She had the whole street to walk down."*

*"So you won't go."*

*"No. Let her go. If that's what she chose, I'll let her have it."*

The file ended.

Lydia stood very still.

"I was drunk," Hayden said. "I'd been sitting in her room for four hours."

"I know."

"I believed what she told me. I believed you wanted out."

"I know that too."

"I'm not saying it to be forgiven."

"Then what are you saying it for?"

"Because you asked me to play it."

She laughed, short and sore.

"That's the first honest thing anyone's said to me tonight."

"Lydia."

"You wrote thirty-six letters," she said. "I counted. Thirty-six. Every month, with the rain in them and the weather and the dog next door."

Keep reading free with an account. Start The Man Who Can't Let Her Go from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.