Chapter 5: The Green Door

Jorie arrived at seven with two pizzas and my wedding cake in a box.

"They were throwing it out," she said, pushing past my husband into the hall.

"Two thousand dollars of lemon sponge. I took the top tier and the cake knife. I'm not a thief, I'm a rescuer."

She stopped in the glass kitchen, which faced the lake, and turned a slow circle.

"Okay," she said. "Wow."

"It's a kitchen," Ewan said.

"It's a cathedral with a stove."

She looked him up and down.

I had changed out of the dress into one of his sweaters and leggings from a box.

My hair was still a knot of pins.

"So you're the husband," Jorie said.

"So I'm told."

"She says you don't talk."

"I talk when there's something to say."

"Good. Then say this. If you hurt her, I know where you live, and it's a very big house to hide in."

"All right," said Ewan.

Jorie turned to me with her eyebrow ring raised.

"That's his whole vocabulary?"

"It means yes," I said.

The housekeeper, a small gray woman who had appeared from nowhere, set out three plates and left again without a word.

We ate pizza on a table made from a single slab of oak, looking at the dark lake.

Jorie ate half a pie and told the story of the slideshow three times, each time with Dexter's face in a different shape.

By the third telling Ewan was laughing, a short surprised sound.

He saw me look, and stopped.

At nine Jorie stood to leave.

She hugged me hard at the door and said into my hair, "Everybody on the floor says the new owner's going to cut Studio B."

"Nobody's cutting anyone," I said.

"I know. I just wanted you to know."

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