Too Late to Beg: I'm No Longer Yours novel · Chapter 16 of 24
Chapter 16: RSVP
"Where is she landing?" I asked.
"O'Hare, Saturday at noon," Dean said. "I should have asked you first."
"You should have."
"I know."
Beside me in the dark, Elias reached over and turned on the lamp, so I could see his face while I decided.
"Send me her flight number," I said, and hung up.
On Saturday I stood at the arrivals door at O'Hare with no sign, because I didn't know how to hold one for a stranger.
She found me anyway.
She was about sixty, small, in a green wool coat, with gray hair and a canvas bag that had seen a lot of church basements.
Dean had sent her my photo.
"You look tired," Troy's mother said. "Have you eaten?"
"Not today."
"Then we'll eat."
We sat in an airport coffee shop with two bad sandwiches between us.
She did not say anything for a minute, and then she said all of it at once.
"We've known Leigh since she was twenty-two. He told us she was in Los Angeles for work. He told us they were waiting for the right time."
"They were."
"And you?"
"I lived in his apartment for five years," I said. "I paid the rent. Then I lent him forty-eight thousand dollars for the bar."
She put her sandwich down.
"He told us you were a roommate," she said. "He said you'd moved out."
"Did he ever tell you why you never met me?"
"He said you wouldn't come. He said you hated meeting people."
I almost laughed.
"He told me you hated visitors," I said.
She was quiet.
"My husband keeps a guest room made up for anybody who wants it," she said. "It's been made up for six years. For Leigh. For his friends. For whoever."
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