Five Hours a Year novel · Chapter 23 of 24

Chapter 23: Nowhere to Be

We flew home on the red-eye with my mother and Frances in the row behind us, arguing about airline pretzels.

By Saturday morning, the bank had called to say the freeze was lifted.

Neither of us got out of bed to hear the details.

I took the call on the pillow, with Alec's arm across my stomach.

"The judge dissolved the order this morning," the woman said. "The petitioner withdrew."

"Thank you."

"Mrs. Stallworth, there's one more thing. A form has come in for you to review."

"Send it to my email."

I hung up and dropped the phone on the floor.

His phone was already buzzing on the crate he used as a nightstand.

He reached for it without opening his eyes and read the screen with one eye shut.

"The partners voted," he said. "Nine to nothing. Desmond's name comes off the door on Monday."

The phone buzzed again.

"The district attorney's office has asked for all two hundred and twelve entries by Wednesday."

He scrolled.

"Brandt's general counsel wants lunch. And Desmond's lawyer wants to know if I'll accept a call."

"Will you?"

"There's a voicemail from him, too."

He held the phone out to me, thumb over the play button.

I looked at the little gray bar with Desmond's name on it.

"Do you want to hear it?"

"I think he's going to tell me he loved me like a son."

"Probably."

"Then no."

Alec deleted it unplayed, and set the phone face down on the crate.

I had expected to feel something large.

I waited for it, the way you wait for a verdict to arrive in your body.

What I felt was Alec's warm arm, and a brief pity for a lonely old man in a navy suit, and then none.

"I thought I'd want to watch," I said. "I don't."

"No."

"My father would have wanted me to."

"Your father would have wanted you to eat something," Alec said, and I laughed into his chest.

His flat across Sansome Street had no curtains.

He had never bought any.

The morning came through the bare windows and lay across the mattress he'd bought on a Tuesday and never made.

It lay across the pale band of skin on his left wrist, where the watch had sat for fifteen years.

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