In Silence, I Let You Go novel · Chapter 24 of 24

Chapter 24: The Bell

The question Colter had saved for Monday turned out to be small.

He asked it across the pie case at the diner, with his coffee going cold.

"Would you let me take you to dinner," he said, "with a reservation under my name and yours?"

"That's the whole question?"

"I wanted to ask it right."

"Yes," I said, and the waitress, who had been pretending not to listen, refilled both our cups without being asked.

Six weeks later, the stock exchange asked the cofounders of Fieldwork to ring the closing bell.

They sent the invitation to two names.

One of them was mine.

The other, the interim chief executive told me, had been returned with a note from his lawyer.

I stood on the balcony above the trading floor at three fifty in the afternoon in the navy dress from the party.

I had thought about wearing something new.

In the end I wanted the same dress, in the same color, in a different room.

Below us the square was full of people and light.

Maggie stood on my left in her good scrubs and a blazer, holding a paper cup of coffee.

She had told three different security guards she was my medical team.

Dorothy stood on my right in her green cardigan, with her reading glasses on their chain, and her purse in both hands.

She had come early so she could see the whole floor.

Every few minutes she touched the corner of her eye with a tissue.

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