I Slept With a Stranger at the Wedding, and Monday He Was My Boss novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Mister

Lottie speaks to Katrina on her first evening and to nobody else, Brady texts about a job Katrina never told him about, and Dane says he never promised to stop looking.

Marlene stood in the kitchen doorway with her hand over her mouth.

Lottie had spoken, and nobody in the house moved.

"That's the dress soap," I said, carefully.

"I wore a green dress Saturday, and I washed it in the bathroom sink this morning."

Lottie looked up out of my shoulder.

"Mommy had a green dress," she said.

"She wore it to the dance.

"She danced with Dane."

I looked at Dane.

He had his hat in both hands and he was staring at the floor.

"My sister and I used to dance at the hall every summer," he said, roughly.

"She'd wear the green one."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"She was a good dancer."

I hadn't known that the green dress would be a dead woman's, or that the dance would be hers.

I felt my face go cold.

I held on to her niece and said nothing at all.

Lottie let me give her a bath.

She stood in the tub in her underwear while I washed her hair, and she told me a great deal, in a whisper, to the wall.

The rabbit's name was Mister.

Mister was not allowed in the bath, because he would drown, but he could sit on the stool and watch.

The porch light had to stay on, and the hall light had to stay half on, and the door had to stay open the width of a hand.

She liked pancakes shaped like Mister, which meant long ears.

She did not like peaches.

"That's a problem," I said.

"You live on a peach orchard."

"I know," she said, and for the first time something like a smile pulled at the gap in her teeth.

When I came out of the bathroom with her wrapped in a towel, Dane stood in the hall in his sock feet.

He had been listening.

I could tell by his face.

He looked like a man who had been hit hard and was waiting to find out where.

"She hasn't said that many words since April," he said, very low.

"I didn't do anything," I said.

"You did something," he said.

"I asked her about a rabbit."

His mouth moved.

It was not a smile, but it was near one.

"I'll put her down," I said.

"If you don't mind."

"She'd want me to."

"I know," he said.

"That's the hell of it."

I put Lottie down at eight with the porch light on, the hall light half on, and the door open a hand's width.

She was asleep before I finished the second page.

I sat on the edge of the bed a few minutes longer, listening to her breathe.

Then I went to my room, sat on the quilt, and opened the laptop I had carried out of my apartment.

I wanted to check my account.

I had $212, and in four days I had a loan payment.

The screen was bright and the battery was at forty percent.

An hour ago it had been at ninety.

I looked at the little plug icon.

I had charged it that afternoon.

I frowned at it, closed it, and checked my phone.

My phone was at nineteen percent, and it had been full when I walked in.

A text sat on the lock screen.

It was from Brady.

"hows the new gig"

I stared at it.

I had told nobody in the world which house I had taken the job at.

I had told my mother "a family outside town."

I typed "how do you know" and deleted it.

I typed "none of your business" and deleted that too.

I put the phone face down on the nightstand.

For a while I sat looking at the dark window.

Then I decided he had seen me on the porch, as he drove out, and I turned out the light.

At midnight I got up for water.

I found Dane on the hall floor outside Lottie's door.

He sat with his back against the wall and his knees up, in a faded gray T-shirt and jeans, with his boots beside him.

His hat was off.

He looked up when I came out, and I didn't pretend I hadn't seen him.

"She wanders," he said.

"Three times since April.

"I can't sleep anyway, so I sit."

"You can't sleep?"

"Three hours a night," he said.

"Since the funeral."

I sat down against the opposite wall, in the oversize T-shirt I slept in, with my knees up too.

The hall light was a thin yellow line across the floor between our feet.

The cicadas had quit and the whole house ticked and settled.

"I'm sorry about the dress," I said.

"You didn't know," he said.

"I didn't know any of it."

"No," he said.

"That's why it was good."

I looked at him.

He was looking at me, steadily, in the half-light.

His eyes dropped to my bare legs, and he made himself raise them.

I watched his throat work.

"Mr. Kneupper," I said.

"I said I wouldn't touch you," he said.

"You did," I said.

"I did not say I would stop looking."

He said it quietly.

I sat on a cold floorboard in the middle of a stranger's house and felt every hair on my arms stand up.

I didn't say anything back.

The thing I wanted to say, and didn't, was that I had not stopped either.

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