Chapter 12: Dennis

I did not wake him.

I turned the phone face down on the nightstand and told myself it could keep until morning, because I had said everything could keep until morning.

I lay there with my eyes open until the window went gray.

At six-thirty he came awake all at once and looked at me.

"You read it," he said.

"It was lit up."

"Althea."

"Dennis lands at seven. Tell her tonight or I will."

He sat up and put his face in his hands.

"I was going to tell you last night."

"I told you not to."

"I know. I'm not blaming you."

"Is it big?"

"Yes."

"Is it piece three?"

"It's the last piece," he said. "The rest were the small ones."

I got out of bed and found my skirt.

I held my hands out and checked them.

Steady.

Two years of adding up other people's lunches, and now that it mattered, they chose to be calm.

"Tell me now."

"I want to tell you at the office."

"Why?"

"Because it started there. And because Cassidy should hear it, too, from me, not from him."

"That's not a reason, it's a speech."

"It's the only way I can say it," he said. "I'll say it once. I won't skip a line."

I looked at him in his bedroom, with the sheet around his hips and his hair a mess.

He had made me come twice in the dark.

I did not want to price him.

"Fine," I said. "At the office."

He packed me a lunch while I dressed, because the plan said one a day.