Chapter 19: The Night Before

Declan checked himself out of the hospital on Wednesday with a bandage the size of a paperback and a prescription he did not fill.

I made him lie on my couch.

He lay there and made a list on the back of a takeout menu.

"Ray has three tickets," he said. "Donor seats at table nine, bought in a dead aunt's name. He and two agents are on their own time."

"So the Bureau isn't coming."

"Ray is. The Bureau is going to be very surprised."

"And you?"

"I'm your date." He set down the pen. "Your father sent a card to the hospital that said son. I'd hate to waste the invitation."

"And me?"

"You do what you chose, Hallie. You get on the dais, you give the toast."

"And I play the cards."

"All four, in my handwriting, to three hundred people. Are you sure?"

"They were mailed to me," I said. "I can read my own mail."

He smiled for the first time all day.

It was a crooked, tired smile, and I felt it in my knees.

I turned off every light in the apartment but the one in the bedroom.

"Come to bed."

"I'm not any use tonight."

"I didn't ask if you were useful."

He sat on the edge of the mattress and let me take off his shirt.

The bandage was white against his ribs.

I kissed the skin above it, and then below, and he breathed out in a long shudder.

"Hallie, I'm bleeding under there."

"You're not."

"I could."

"You won't. Lie back."

I took my own clothes off in the lamplight, slowly, and watched his eyes go dark.