Before I Forget His Name novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The First Name on the Card

I woke in the dark, in a bed that was warm on one side.

For a moment I lay still, listening to my own pulse.

There was a smell of warm leather in the air and a weight on the mattress beside me.

A hand lay open near mine.

I put my fingers in it.

"Adriano," I said, before I opened my eyes.

The hand closed tight around mine.

He had been awake already. I could tell by the silence in him.

"Yes," he said, in a voice that wasn't steady.

He had started to say something else. I heard the first breath of it.

"Hello, Livia. I'm-"

"I know who you are." I opened my eyes. "You're the man who snores."

"I don't snore."

"You do. A little. On the left side."

He laughed, and then he put his forehead against my shoulder and stayed there.

It had happened twice in eighteen months, after two bad nights.

Both times he had told me who he was in plain words and let me find my own way back.

This morning I hadn't needed it.

I stroked the short, dark hair that had grown back over his scalp, and I did not say anything for a while.

We lived in a house on the water in Red Hook, five minutes from the pier.

The scans came every three months, and every three months we sat in the waiting room and said the same word to each other.

Today.

The last scan had been clean.

Today was the first day of the dock school, which was the real reason I had woken so early.

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