After I Learned I Was Going to Be His Ex-Wife novel · Chapter 29 of 32

Chapter 29: The Blank Card

"I said no more cards," I said.

"I know. You said it on the hotel steps. In March."

"I remember. I was freezing."

"So don't write it." He held out his hand, palm up. "Just give me one. A blank one."

I always have blank cards. In my trench coat, in my handbag, in every pair of jeans I own.

I took one out of the evidence pocket, from beside his lawyers' envelope, and put it in his hand.

He looked at the empty white rectangle like it was a contract.

"Tomorrow," he said. "It's a Tuesday."

[A TUESDAY]

[he's calling back the TUESDAY card. the diner card. I'm unwell]

At nine on Tuesday he picked me up from the penthouse lobby, which was a strange thing to do in a building where we both lived.

"There are five actors upstairs," he said, when I pointed it out. "I wanted a door that wasn't theirs."

He drove us to the diner on Lincoln.

The same red stools. The same waitress, who looked at him and then at me and said, "Oh, she came back. Good."

"The usual," Benedict said. "Two."

"Pickles?"

"Always pickles."

We ate without talking much. He kept looking at me.

Then he took the blank card out of his breast pocket and laid it on the counter between our plates.

He'd written on it. Small square capitals.

YOU. ME. THE REST OF IT.

That was all. No first line.

"There's no line," I said.

"No. I'm supposed to say that part without one."

He turned on his stool to face me.

The waitress, at the far end of the counter, stopped wiping it.

"Hen," he said. "I love you."

He said it plainly, like a fact he'd checked twice.

"I've loved you since you made my grandmother laugh until she cried. Since the cake knife. I didn't say it, because if I said it, it was mine, and if it was mine it could be taken."

His voice stayed steady. His hands didn't.

"I don't care anymore if it's taken. I'd rather say it."

[HE SAID IT]

[NO CARD. NO CHARACTER. HE SAID IT]

[I've waited 47 chapters and three years and a fire]

He took something out of his pocket.

A plain gold band. Thinner than the one from City Hall.

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