15 Days Before I Left Him novel · Chapter 6 of 24

Chapter 6: The Rental

My last dress fitting was on Saturday at ten, at a shop in Grand Rapids that had my measurements on file since March.

Roscoe was supposed to drive me and then take me to lunch.

At nine thirty he sent a text: Faye has a scan at eleven, Mom can't take her. So sorry! Raylan will pick you up. Love you.

I stared at it in the hall mirror.

Then I opened the front door, and Raylan was already on the landing in a grey sweater, holding his rental car keys.

"He asked me to be your driver," he said. "I told him I'd rather not. He said it was the only way he'd stop feeling guilty."

"That sounds like him."

"It does."

He held the stairwell door for me and said nothing else.

The rental was a dark sedan that still smelled like the lot.

It had started to rain, a thin cold rain that fogged the windshield, and Raylan reached across without being asked and turned the heater up on my side.

"You're shivering," he said.

"I'm fine."

"Your hands say otherwise."

He was right.

I hadn't slept properly in a week, and I was cold all the time now.

We drove for ten minutes with the wipers going.

I watched his hands on the wheel, the left one steady at twelve o'clock, a pale line of old rope burn across the knuckles.

I did not know why I was looking at his hands.

I looked out the window instead.

At the boutique the seamstress met us at the door with pins in her mouth.

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