Chapter 23: No

Lucinda looked at the ring for a long time.

Then she looked at him.

"No," she said.

Alden did not flinch.

He did not close the box, either.

"Not today," she said. "Not at my father's gate, an hour after I cried on his grave."

She shook her head.

"You were kind to me. That's not a yes. That's a Tuesday."

"It's a Friday."

"Alden."

"Sorry."

She almost smiled.

"I want you," she said. "I want to find out what you're like when you aren't afraid."

"But?"

"I spent three years in your house being the help. I won't move back in as a wife until I know why you'd want me there."

"What do you want me to do?"

"Don't ask me again. I'll tell you when."

He closed the box slowly and put it away.

"And in the meantime?"

"There's a rehab unit on the seventh floor of the county hospital," she said. "It has your money in it."

"My money?"

"They're short on night volunteers."

"What do I do?"

"Whatever the nurse says."

He held out his hand, formally.

She shook it.

They both started laughing and couldn't stop.

Three weeks later, at one in the morning, she stood in the doorway of the seventh-floor gym with her coat still on.

She had come to drop off a donor form.

She stayed because she heard his voice.

Alden knelt in front of a boy of nineteen in a gray T-shirt, who gripped the parallel bars with white knuckles.

The boy's legs trembled.

"You've got it," Alden said. "Weight on the left. Now shift."

"I can't."

"Yes, you can. I couldn't either. For two years."

"You're lying."

"I'm not. A nurse told me to take one step. I said no. I said it for about four months."

The boy's right foot slid forward an inch.

Then another inch.

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