Her Love Came Too Late novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Frozen Peas

At his sister's kitchen table Elliott counts what he gave up, Hannah brings his wallet, and a photo of the open stage door arrives from Marin.

Briana's kitchen was the size of a closet, and she banged every pan in it.

"Sit," she said, and pointed a spatula at the only chair.

Elliott sat.

It was nine in the morning, and she had come off a twelve-hour shift to make him eggs.

"You don't have to do this."

"I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it so I don't drive across town and put my fist through her car window."

She slid a plate in front of him.

The eggs were burnt on one side and raw on the other.

He ate them anyway.

"Go on," Briana said, and leaned against the counter with her arms crossed. "Say it."

"Say what?"

"What it cost you. All of it. I want it out loud."

"Briana."

"Elliott Hartley. Out loud."

He put his fork down.

"Chicago," he said.

"Chicago."

"Year two. The firm offered me a partner track. A real one, with my name on a door in three years."

"And you told them?"

"I told them my wife had a residency at the Ardmore and I couldn't leave Pittsburgh."

"And you never told her."

"She had enough on her mind."

Briana closed her eyes for a second.

"She had a manager on her mind," she said. "Go on."

"I drove her to every show. I sat in the car park through every sound check. I learned to make coffee the way she likes it so nobody on her crew would see me do it wrong."

"And what did she call you?"

"A friend of the family, if anyone asked."

Briana said a word that would have gotten her fired from the hospital.

Then she picked up the spatula again and started scraping the pan harder than it needed.

"You're allowed to be angry," she said.

"I'm not angry."

"You're sitting with your coat on in my kitchen eating a raw egg, Elliott. You're furious. You just haven't found where to put it yet."

He almost laughed.

It hurt his eye, and he stopped.

Somebody knocked at the door.

Briana looked at him.

"Do you think it's her?"

"She doesn't know where you live."

"She's a celebrity. They find things out."

She went and opened it with the spatula still in her hand.

The woman in the doorway wore jeans and a grey sweatshirt, with her dark blonde hair loose around her shoulders.

It took Elliott a second to know her without the uniform.

"Officer Greer," he said.

"Hannah," she said. "I'm off shift."

She held up his wallet in one hand and a bag of frozen peas in the other.

"You left this in the property bin. The wallet, not the peas. The peas are for your eye."

"How did you find the address?"

"It's on your license. I'm sorry. I should've called first. I don't make a habit of this."

Briana looked her up and down with her best triage face.

Then she looked at the peas.

"I like her," she said to Elliott. "Come in. Do you eat eggs?"

"I do not recommend them," Elliott said.

"Rude," said Briana, and pulled out the second chair.

Hannah sat down on the edge of it, with her coat still on.

She put the wallet on the table and slid the peas toward him.

"Frozen corn would be better," she said. "It molds to the bone. But I'm a desk officer, and I only had peas."

"They're fine."

"Hold it a little higher. Over the stitches, not on them."

He lifted the bag.

Her fingers moved the peas half an inch, and they were warm from the bag she had been carrying.

He could feel exactly where each of them touched his skin.

Briana was watching them both with her eyebrows up, saying nothing, which was not like her.

"I came for another reason," Hannah said, and took her hand back. "Your wife's manager called the captain at six this morning."

"Of course he did."

"He wants the 199 reports sealed. He called it a privacy matter for an artist's family."

"Is that allowed?"

"The captain said he'd think about it." She turned her cup of water around on the table. "I kept a copy of the binder. I don't think I'm supposed to say that."

Briana put the spatula down.

"Why are you telling him?" she asked, not rudely.

Hannah looked at Elliott for a moment.

"Because for two years I stamped his release and told him to hold still," she said. "And I never once asked why a man would come back to the same door."

Elliott did not know what to say to that.

Nobody said anything.

The kettle began to whistle, and Briana went and took it off the heat very slowly, giving them room.

His phone buzzed on the table beside the wallet.

He looked down.

It was a photo from Marin, taken in the dark.

The Ardmore's side door stood propped open with a folded programme, and a strip of warm light lay across the pavement.

Under it she had written: Leaving it open for you. Saturday. I love you.

He turned the phone over before Hannah could see his face.

She saw it anyway.

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