Too Late to Love Me novel · Chapter 12 of 24

Chapter 12: Opening Night

I read the card three times.

My name was on it in gold, and the date was real, and there was no funeral in it anywhere.

I held it up across the room.

"You said I was dead," I said.

Zane had gone very still against the wall, with a slice of cold pizza halfway to his mouth.

He put it down on the floor, and he looked at the card a man looks at a letter from a lawyer.

"I forgot it was in that coat," he said.

"I carried it for three years."

"I don't know how I forgot."

"Zane."

"Yes."

"Am I dead?"

The radiator ticked.

Hattie stood very straight beside the hooks, and she wasn't smiling now.

"No," he said.

I felt the floor go from under me and come back.

"You lived," he said.

"You lived a long time, June."

"You lived so well that people crossed rooms to touch your sleeve."

I sat down on the arm of the couch.

"Say all of it."

"You didn't get the Fellowship."

"Regan did, with the harbor."

"You walked out of Whitcombe that winter with a duffel bag and eleven dollars."

"You were gone for two years, and nobody knew where, and my mother told everyone you'd left town because you were ashamed."

His voice was steady, and it cost him.

"You came back at twenty-five with forty paintings, and the whole city went mad."

"The museum gave you a floor."

"The card in your hand is the night of the opening."

"I was there," he said.

"I stood in the line with a bouquet."

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