What We Choose novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: My Robe

Dessa comes to pack and finds Sienna in her robe in her kitchen, takes it back in front of the neighbors and moves what's left of her mother's money, then sees the post Nash's mother wrote about her.

Dessa

Kenna drove.

"Say the word and I key his truck," she said. "I have a very sharp apartment key. I have been saving it for a man exactly like this."

"I just want my stuff."

"Your stuff and his kneecaps."

"My stuff, Kenna."

She grunted and passed a minivan on the right.

I'd spent the night on her pullout couch in the South End with my face in a throw pillow that smelled like bar lime.

Colter Gannon's driver had dropped me at her door at seven fifteen.

The man himself had said maybe twenty words to me on that curb.

"You can't stay here. He'll drive you, or I will. Where do you want to go?"

I'd asked him why he cared.

"Because you're the only one who told me," he'd said.

Then he'd shut the car door very gently.

At four in the morning Kenna had climbed onto the couch with me, boots still on, and said, "We're going to get your things at eight, and if he's there I'm allowed one punch. Final offer."

So now it was 8:04, and we were parked outside the pharmacy on Main Street.

Nash's truck was in its spot.

Next to it was a white Range Rover with a Bayline parking sticker.

Kenna looked at the Range Rover. Then at me.

"Oh, absolutely not," she said.

I already had my key out.

The stairs up to the apartment creaked on the fourth step like they always did.

I'd loved that creak. I'd thought it meant home.

I unlocked the door.

The kitchen smelled like my coffee.

Sienna Gannon was standing at my counter, pouring it into my mug.

She was wearing my robe.

It was the blue waffle one my mother had bought me the Christmas before she got sick. It had a bleach spot on the pocket shaped like Ohio.

It was too short on her.

She turned around and didn't even pretend to be surprised.

"Oh. Dessa." She smiled. "You should've called."

"That's my robe."

"Is it?" She looked down at herself. "It was on the hook."

Kenna stepped in beside me. "Lady, I will drag you down those stairs by your extensions."

"They're not extensions." Sienna took a sip of my coffee. "Nash is in the shower. I'll tell him you stopped by."

I heard the water running in the bathroom.

I walked past her into the bedroom and pulled my big duffel out of the closet.

Sienna followed me to the doorway, leaning on the frame.

"You know, I actually feel bad for you," she said.

I started on the dresser. Socks. Bras. My mother's old Ohio State sweatshirt.

"He was going to stay with you through all of it. Chemo, the surgery, all that." She swirled the mug. "But a man has needs, Dessa. You're going to be bald by October and flat by Christmas. What did you think was going to happen?"

Kenna made a sound.

I zipped the duffel.

I picked up my mother's sewing box from the closet shelf. Walnut, with a cracked hinge. The last thing in that apartment I couldn't replace.

Then I set it down on the bed and walked back to Sienna.

"Take it off."

"Excuse me?"

"My robe. Take it off."

She laughed. "Or what?"

"Or I call the police and tell them a woman I don't know broke into my apartment and stole my dead mother's robe." I held up my phone. "My name is on this lease. Yours isn't."

Her smile flickered.

"Nash said I could..."

"Nash isn't on the lease by himself."

I unlocked the phone and pressed nine.

"Fine," she snapped.

She pulled the belt loose and let the robe drop to the floor.

She was in a lace bra and tiny lace underwear, standing in my doorway.

Out in the hall, our neighbor from across the landing had just opened her door to get her newspaper.

She was seventy-four. She went to church with Nash's mother.

She stared.

Sienna snatched a dish towel off the counter and held it in front of herself.

I picked up my robe and folded it over my arm.

"Thank you," I said.

The shower shut off.

Kenna leaned out into the hall and waved to the neighbor. "Morning! Just collecting some stolen property."

The neighbor closed her door very slowly.

Sienna was red to the collarbone.

"You little..."

"Your clothes are probably in his room," I said. "I'd hurry. Mrs. Penhallow's friends get up early."

She went.

I sat on the edge of my old bed and opened my banking app.

The wedding account.

Twenty-four thousand dollars of my mother's life insurance, the day after we got engaged, so we'd have the yacht club in June.

The balance said $9,100.

I scrolled.

Harborview Inn. $412.

Harborview Inn. $389.

The Oyster Room. $286.

A jeweler on Newbury Street. $2,950.

The first Harborview charge was August third.

The day of my biopsy.

I'd driven myself home from that appointment with an ice pack in my bra.

He'd paid for her room with my mother's money.

I hit transfer.

Joint account. Either signer.

$9,100 to my own checking.

Done in a few seconds.

The bathroom door opened. Nash came out in a towel and saw me sitting on the bed.

His whole face lit up for one second.

Then he saw the duffel and the robe and Sienna in the hall, half-dressed, glaring.

"Dess. Babe. This isn't..."

"Fourteen thousand nine hundred dollars," I said. "That's what you spent of my mom's money. I want it back."

"That was our account."

"It was her life insurance, Nash. She died and it turned into that."

He had nothing.

He never did, when it mattered.

Kenna carried the sewing box. I carried the duffel and the robe.

Nobody stopped us on the stairs.

In the car, Kenna didn't start the engine.

She was looking at her phone with her mouth pressed flat.

"Des. Don't freak out."

"Why would I freak out?"

She turned the screen toward me.

It was the Larkhaven Moms group. Eleven thousand members.

The post was from Nash's mother, with a photo of me from the engagement party, smiling in a yellow dress.

Please keep our Dessa in your prayers. Her diagnosis has her so confused, and she said some terrible, untrue things last night. Our Nash is heartbroken but standing by her. Love wins.

Three hundred and twelve comments.

I scrolled.

Praying for Nash.

That poor boy.

Cancer does things to the brain, I saw it with my aunt.

Sienna Gannon had liked every single one.

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