The Photo Said I Must Die novel · Chapter 18 of 24
Chapter 18: Past the Ninth
By ten o'clock the dining room was empty except for the plates.
Five of Briana's friends had driven back to Worcester in the dark.
The other four had asked Judd's aunt for rooms as far from my sister as the inn allowed, and the book-club woman had cried on the stairs.
Briana herself had gone up to room two with her bag and closed the door.
Oliver sat on the porch with a glass of water and nothing in his hands, now that the ring box was upstairs in my sister's fist, and he did not want to talk.
I climbed to my room above the terrace and found Judd already inside.
He was standing at the window with his back to me.
The terrace lamps were off, and the rail lay in the dark below him.
"I told myself I'd wait in the hall," he said.
"You can wait in the hall."
"I know."
He didn't move.
I closed the door and leaned on it.
"Say it," I said. "Whatever it is."
"It's a stupid thing."
"Judd."
He turned around.
"You're not dying," he said, rough. "You're a free woman with a car and a phone and a whole life in Worcester. In three weeks this is going to be a place where something bad almost happened to you. You'll want to be as far from it as a person can get."
"And?"
"And I'm not going to ask you to stay. I wouldn't do that to you." He swallowed. "I just want you to know I understood the deal when I took it."
"What deal?"
"Until the ninth."
I walked across the room and stood in front of him.
"I called my manager from the porch an hour ago," I said. "She told me my job's still mine. She also told me the clinic's been short-handed since I left, and she wants me back in October."
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