Chapter 17: She Leaves

I packed one bag in ten minutes.

Cade didn't come upstairs, and he didn't stand in the doorway.

When I came down with the bag, he was in the hall with my coat held open.

I took it from him and put it on myself.

"The gold ring stays on," I said. "I'm not taking it off until the eighteenth."

"I wouldn't ask you to."

"I'm not wearing it for you."

"I know."

I drove across the city with the heater roaring and the radio off.

Brynn lived on the fourth floor of a building with a broken buzzer and a ring light in every window.

She opened the door in pajama pants covered in cartoon avocados and took one look at my face.

"Oh, honey," she said. "No. Come in. I've got wine and a very sad cake."

"You said glitter."

"The glitter is the sad part."

The cake sat on the counter, lopsided and silver, with a single word piped across it in blue.

It said "REVENGE," and the E had slid sideways.

I laughed, and then I was crying.

She held on to me in the avocado pajamas and let me ruin her shoulder.

"He knew," I said. "He knew in November."

"I figured he knew something. Nobody that calm is surprised." She rubbed my back. "Did he lie to you?"

"He told me a week."

"Okay, that's a lie."

"And he didn't tell me until his father put it on a tablecloth."

"That's a bigger lie."

She handed me a paper towel.

"You can be furious and still need him. It's allowed. I do it with my mother."

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