Chapter 10: Nine-Twelve

I didn't ask Colin.

He had said "work" about an envelope at dawn.

Now Lindsey was handing me a question with a bow on it.

I wasn't going to run to him with it.

I texted Veda from the studio bathroom.

What did I do on the morning of the crash?

She wrote back in under a minute.

I'm picking you up at five.

She was outside the warehouse at five in a beat-up green hatchback.

She didn't say a word until we were on the highway.

"Where are we going?" I said.

"Wherever you want."

I took out the lease application and read her the address.

She exhaled through her nose and turned the car around.

Oakley Avenue was a quiet street of brick three-flats with stoops and bare maples.

We parked across from number 2214 and sat with the engine off.

It was a narrow building, red brick with white trim, and the top-floor windows faced east.

A paper sign taped in the second-floor window said FOR RENT, 1 BR, AVAILABLE OCT 1.

I looked up at it for a long time.

"It's the one I drew," I said. "The light from the east."

"It's pretty," Veda said.

"I was going to live here."

"Alone?"

"I think so."

"Did you tell Colin?"

"I don't know if I did."

My throat hurt.

I was twenty-five years old, and I had a husband I'd dreamed of since college.

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