Chapter 6: Rain

It started to rain before we reached the end of Ingrid's street.

Dane drove with both hands on the wheel and said nothing.

The wipers kept time.

"I need to pick up your bag," he said at last. "From the motel."

"It's a bag with three shirts in it."

"I know. I want to carry it."

At the motel on Euclid he went inside in the downpour and came back with it over his shoulder, soaked to the skin.

He put it in the back seat and got behind the wheel and sat there, breathing.

Water ran off his hair onto his collar.

"I owe you an apology I don't know how to finish," he said.

"Then don't finish it tonight."

He turned his head and looked at me.

The dashboard light caught his eyes, and I remembered every single thing about them.

"My place is ten minutes from here," he said. "I can't go back to that wing and be a man in a chair. Not yet."

"Then take me there."

"Hannah."

"I'm not asking you to say anything," I said. "I'm asking you to drive."

He drove.

His penthouse was on the thirty-first floor, with a wall of black glass and the lake beyond it flashing white.

The door shut behind us.

Neither of us had turned on a light.

I stood in the dark hall with my wet hair stuck to my neck, and he stood a foot away, and neither of us moved.

Then he opened the drawer of the console table.

He took out a folded square of yellow wool and held it up in the dim light.

My scarf.

I had left it on his hospital chair the last time I'd been allowed in the room.

"I kept it," he said. "I never knew why."

I took it from his hand, dropped it on the floor, and kissed him.

His mouth was cold from the rain and then it wasn't.

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