Chapter 5: Ten Minutes

I gave him ten minutes, a time and a rule, and I gave them to him in the corridor.

"Tomorrow, four o'clock," I said. "My flat. You have ten minutes at my table."

"Sabina, I have three years of questions."

"You have ten minutes."

I wrote the address on the back of my program and held it out without letting our fingers touch.

He took it by the very corner.

"Jamie is not told who you are," I said. "You are Mama's friend. Say anything else and you're out the door."

"Does he know about me at all?"

"He knows he has a father who is far away."

"Far away." Quentin looked down at the paper. "I was in a hotel four streets from here last night."

"You were far enough."

He took that without a flinch, and I hated that it hadn't felt better to say.

"Four o'clock," he said. "I'll be early."

"Be on time."

Jamie yawned against my neck. The daycare worker had gone to find his coat.

Quentin watched us leave and did not follow.

I looked back once, from the stairs, and he was still standing under the light with the program in his hand.

At ten to four the next day, I was on my knees in the kitchen wiping up juice that I had already wiped up.

My flat had two rooms and a balcony on the lake. It smelled of toast.

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