Chapter 7: Willa's POV

Willa's POV

Cal hadn't looked me in the eye since Tuesday.

He had always looked me in the eye.

He was the one Penrose who did.

He listened to my whole story about a book fair disaster and laughed in the right places.

Now he stared at his coffee, and at the fence, and at Lydia's car parked across from my son's school.

By Friday morning he had moved into his mother's guest room.

Lydia texted me at nine.

"Cal and I are having a rough patch. Please don't worry. Please don't ask him."

I read it three times in the school library.

A first grader beside me was looking for a lost shoe.

Please don't ask him.

I'm a librarian.

Telling me not to look something up is the fastest way to make me do it.

I took the afternoon off.

Dane was at the dealership until six on Fridays.

He called it the weekly sales review and I called it the golf outing.

I went straight to the study.

The safe was in the closet behind his winter coats.

He thinks I don't know the combination.

It is Archie's birthday, because it is the only number he has never forgotten.

The little door swung open with a soft click.

There was cash in an envelope, the title to his truck, and a velvet box of his father's cufflinks.

Under all that lay a manila folder, thick and soft at the corners.

It said ADOPTION in Dane's neat block letters.

I knew most of what was in it, because I had signed it.

There was a notarized form with my signature on the bottom line.

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