Chapter 20: Two Steps

Preston's hands came off my leg.

He stayed on his knees on the carpet, looking up at me.

The patient look was gone. What was under it was small and sharp.

"You can't have felt that," he said. "The doctors told you."

"You told me the doctors told me."

The connecting door opened the rest of the way, and Knox came through it with the recorder in his raised hand.

"Get out," he said.

Preston stood slowly and brushed off his knees.

"That's nothing," he said. "She's a sick woman, I was massaging her, and you've cut it to make it sound like something."

"It's all on the phone," I said. "Every word."

"No court will hear it."

"Then you don't need to worry," Knox said. "Get out."

Preston looked at me one last time, and then he left the roses on the floor and walked out.

I heard the elevator chime and the doors close.

I sat there shaking with my hands pressed flat on my thighs, where he had touched me.

"Take me to the lake house," I said.

"Now?"

"I don't want to sleep in a room he's stood in."

Knox didn't ask a second time.

The cabin was dark when we got there, and the lake was black behind it.

He lit the stove, and I rolled to the middle of the front room and set my brakes.

Then I put both hands on the arms of the chair and pushed myself up.

My legs shook so hard that my teeth clicked.

"Lydia."

"Don't touch me. Watch."

I let go of the chair.

One step.

My right foot dragged on the boards and caught, and I felt the floor press up through my heel.

Two steps.

My left knee gave, and Knox's arms came around me before I fell.

He held me against his chest, and I was laughing and crying with my face in his shirt.

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