How to Say Our Final Goodbye novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Not Yet

"Oysters," I said.

"A dozen. And a bottle of the good champagne, on your father's house account."

I sat down on the arm of the sofa.

Eleven days before her wedding.

In my mother's hotel.

On my father's tab.

"I'm not even surprised," I said. "Why am I not surprised?"

"Because she's Kirsten." Dolly flopped down on the sofa behind me. "Want me to go knock? I could knock. I could knock very hard."

"No. Nobody knocks. Nobody films. Nobody listens at the door."

"I wasn't going to listen at the door."

"Dolly."

"I was going to listen at the door a little."

The head of housekeeping came up at ten the next morning, with her cart, and shut the door of 1206 behind her.

She sat down on the edge of the coffee table, which she never did.

"They left at seven," she said. "Separately. Her first, then him, ten minutes later, with his collar up like a spy in a movie."

"Is it the first time?"

"The fourth. Since the middle of May. The girls on nine have seen her in the elevator every time."

She folded her hands in her lap.

"I made up the room. There was a letter on the desk. Open, face up, next to the ice bucket. I didn't touch it. But I read it while I changed the sheets."

"What did it say?"

"It was on his company's paper. A consulting agreement. Two percent of the purchase price of the Bellmore, paid at closing to something called KF Creative."

Kirsten Fairbairn Creative.

She'd put it on her business cards when she was nineteen.

"She's getting paid," I said. "To help tear it down."

"Two percent of a hotel is a great deal of money, Clementine."

"I know what two percent of a hotel is."

She patted my knee, stood up, took her cart and left.

I sat at my mother's desk for an hour after that, looking at the river.

Wyeth knocked at midnight.

The right knock.

I opened the door and he took one look at my face and put down the takeout bag.

"What happened?"

I told him.

The room. The oysters. The two percent.

He listened standing in the middle of the carpet with his hands at his sides, and when I finished, he didn't say anything.

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