This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 11 of 24

Chapter 11: The Last Night

Padraig did not argue when I said I was leaving.

He arranged it.

By the second morning he had a replacement surgeon booked on the Thursday flight and a seat for me on the Friday one, and he handed me the itinerary without a word.

I took it without a word, too.

We had not touched each other since the satellite room.

At dinner on my last night, Bess banged a ladle on a pot and made the whole gym stand up.

There was rice and lentils and a cake somebody's grandmother had baked on a camp stove, with a single candle stuck in the top.

"To Dr. Kincaid," Bess said. "Who arrived with a bad coat and a worse husband, and saved a leg in thirty-seven minutes."

Everyone laughed.

"Come back," Bess said into my ear as she hugged me. "Or I'll come find you, and I'm too old for airports."

I laughed and held her tight.

The girl with the braid was there, on a cot with her leg propped on a pillow.

She held out a folded paper crane.

I took it, and I could not say anything for a moment.

Padraig watched all of it from the back wall with his arms folded.

When the plates had been cleared, he crossed the floor and stopped in front of me.

"Walk with me," he said.

We climbed to the roof.

The stars were out again. The gravel was still cold under my boots.

He stood with his hands in his pockets and did not speak for so long that I thought he had changed his mind.

"I owe you an apology," Padraig said.

"You do."

"I should have told you what I knew the day you arrived. I didn't, because I wanted to see what you'd do. I wanted to catch you." His jaw worked. "That was a rotten thing to do to a woman I already liked."

"You already liked me?"

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