Chapter 7: Forty Signs

I signed slowly, so he would not miss a word.

I could not sleep.

My head was ringing.

I went to the pharmacy on 68th Street.

I watched his hands, and his mouth, and the small muscle in his cheek.

He read each sign.

"The pharmacy," he said aloud, and set down the whiskey. "At two in the morning."

I touched my ear and made a face.

He stood, crossed the kitchen, and put both hands on my shoulders.

"You should have woken Geneva," he said.

I frowned.

"The housekeeper," he corrected, too quickly.

"Boston was canceled," he added. "Albert caught a cold. I came home to surprise you."

He smiled down at me, and his thumb moved in a small circle on my collarbone, over the diamond.

I knew that thumb.

It used to mean he was thinking.

Now it meant he had decided something and was waiting for the right day.

"Come to bed," he said.

I went, and lay awake beside him again.

Peter's taste was still in my mouth, and there was a hot new ache between my legs.

The Schuyler Hearing Foundation held its breakfast the next morning in a ballroom on Park Avenue.

It was Tobias's favorite event of the year, because it was the one where he told people about me.

Four hundred guests ate eggs under a banner that said Brave Together.

On the stage stood a lectern, two chairs, and a woman in a navy suit who would interpret.

She was thin, around forty, with kind tired eyes.

She had the strong forearms of someone who had signed for thirty years.

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