Chapter 9: The Clinic Door

Kyle was close enough to read my screen.

I turned it face down against my dress.

"Who's that?" he said.

"A wrong number."

"You went white."

"I've had a long day."

His eyes stayed on my phone for a moment too long.

Then they came up, and for the first time since the party he looked afraid.

It lasted half a second.

"I'll see you in court, Will," he said, and went back inside.

I walked down the club's long drive with the phone at my ear, and I did not breathe until I was past the hedges.

"Mrs. Rutledge, are you still there?" the woman on the phone said.

"I'm here. What kind of mistake?"

"I'd rather not say over the phone. Can you come in today? We close at five."

"I'll be there by three."

A pickup truck was idling at the bottom of the drive.

Sam leaned across the cab and pushed open the passenger door.

"I was going to wait in the lot," he said. "I thought you might want a ride."

"I want to go to a clinic on Forbes Avenue."

He put the truck in gear without asking why.

We drove for ten minutes.

I held my phone in both hands in my lap.

At a red light, he reached over without looking and covered my knuckles with his hand.

He took it away when the light changed.

It was the second time he'd touched me, and I tried not to make too much of it.

I couldn't help it.

The clinic was on the third floor of an office building with a beige lobby and a tank of fat orange fish.

I had sat in that waiting room a few times, because Kyle said the rest of the visits were just his paperwork.

I'd thought he was sparing me.

Sam stayed in the waiting room with a magazine he didn't read.

The nurse who had called me took me into a small office and shut the door.

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