Chapter 9: Someone Should Have Let Me Die

The library closed at six, and at 6:20 Percy walked into Imogen's workroom without knocking.

Hattie was just leaving with her coat on one arm.

She took one look at him, set her bag back down on the table, and said, "Five minutes. I'm in the hall."

She shut the door behind her.

Percy stood on the other side of the long worktable with the old black phone in his hand.

His coat was buttoned wrong.

"I read all of it," he said.

Imogen put her bone folder down on the open atlas.

"I know. Dylan called Hattie an hour ago."

"I watched the video over and over."

She said nothing.

"I asked you," Percy said. "A hundred times. You said yes in my grandmother's garden."

He gripped the phone.

"I don't remember any of it. I don't remember you. But it's on this phone, in my own voice, and I..."

His throat worked.

"I'm sorry," he said. "I don't know how to say how sorry."

"Then don't try."

"Imogen..."

"Sit down, Percy."

He sat on the edge of the stool Dylan had used.

She stayed standing, with her palms flat on the table.

"I want to tell you something," she said. "Listen to all of it."

"All right."

"Then go home and don't say anything back."

"All right."

"The day you woke up in St. Anne's, you didn't know me. That's not your fault."

"No."

"The doctor told me to be patient. I was patient for three days."

She kept her voice flat, and it did not shake.

"On the third day I sat by your bed with a cup of tea."

She waited a beat.

"You looked at me for a long time. Then you asked the nurse who I was. She said, your wife, and you closed your eyes."

Percy had gone very still.

"You said, 'If that's my wife, somebody should have let me die in that car.'"

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