Chapter 4: The Exchange

Chisolm slapped no one that night, because he did not need to.

He locked the bedroom door from the outside and left me with the lights off and the silence.

At seven the next morning a call came on his phone, and I heard him answer it standing very straight.

It was Granger Holdings, and they wanted Mr. Granger's belongings returned.

A box of his things had been left in my closet.

A watch, a paperback, a gray cardigan that smelled like him.

Rhodri's office would send a car for me on Sunday, with a driver, for thirty minutes.

Chisolm could not refuse his boss's boss.

He hated that, and I watched him hate it.

"Thirty minutes," he said.

He fastened his hand around the back of my neck.

"My driver will be downstairs. If you are one minute late, I will know why."

The penthouse was on the top floor of Granger Tower, and Rhodri opened the door himself.

No housekeeper.

No assistant.

He wore a gray T-shirt and old jeans, and his hair was wet from a shower.

For a second he looked at me.

"Hi," he said.

"Hi."

I held out the box.

He took it and set it on the hall table without looking inside.

"I have things of yours."

"I didn't leave anything."

"You left a lot," Rhodri said.

He went to the study and came back with a cardboard tube and a paper bag.

Inside the tube were my glass sketches, rolled up, the ones I had drawn at the dining table when I couldn't sleep.

In the bag was a pair of small work boots I had worn in his garden.

"You kept these," I said.

"You said you'd come back for them."

"I said that in the garden, in April."

"I know what you said."

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