Chapter 11: The Coin Under the Door

Otis's POV

She left at six forty with my folder under her arm and I let her go.

I stood in my own kitchen with a tray of croissants cooling and understood I had deserved every word.

Seven Thursdays.

Seven times I had carried a black coffee to table nine and set a tiramisu next to a woman's hand on a married man's hand.

I told myself it wasn't my business.

I told myself that every week, and every week it got a little harder to believe.

The truth was simpler.

Four years ago, Holden Stroud had taken everything I built and called it business.

I had learned that men who do that don't forgive being watched.

So I kept my head down, and I served the coffee, and a woman who had never done anything to me went on painting a nursery.

I turned the oven off.

I turned the sign on the door to CLOSED for the first time in three years, and I stood looking at it.

At eight, Libby texted my cell, which I had given her on Tuesday in case.

She's here. She's okay. She's eating toast and not talking to you.

I typed, Tell her the radiator's fixed.

It wasn't.

I deleted it and typed, Tell her I'm sorry.

I deleted that too, because Libby would not carry an apology.

I sent: Is the baby moving?

A minute later: Yes. She kicked a pillow off the couch.

I put the phone down and laughed, once, into my hand.

It was the first time in a week.

I spent the morning doing something I hadn't done since the day I lost the firm.

I went through the old files.

Not the folder I'd shown Greta.

The other box, the one under the bed in the flat upstairs, with a rubber band around it.

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