He Hid Me for Twelve Years, Now the City Knows My Name novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Thirty Days

Harrison apologizes and makes an excuse. Kate sets three terms and he posts a statement. It is gone two minutes later.

I opened the storm door and let him into the entryway, but no farther.

Harrison stood on the mat dripping onto it.

Up close he smelled of rain and bourbon, and his dress shirt was open at the throat.

"I sat in the car outside for six hours," he said. "I couldn't make myself ring the bell."

"You could have texted."

"I didn't know what to type."

"I'm outside in the sleet," I said. "That was easy for me."

He closed his eyes.

"A friend of the family," I said. "In front of a hundred people."

"My mother was at table one. She was forty feet from where I stood."

"I stood where your friend told me to stand, so your mother wouldn't see me."

"I know."

"Do you know why I was there at all?"

His eyes opened.

"Lorna said you wanted to see the hotel lit up for the foundation night," he said. "She said she'd bring you as her guest and I shouldn't make a fuss."

I stared at him.

"She told me you'd arranged it."

We stood very still in the narrow hallway.

"She might have gotten it garbled," Harrison said slowly. "It was a busy week."

"She's never garbled a thing in twelve years."

"No."

Neither of us said the next part.

Upstairs, a floorboard creaked as my brother woke up on my couch.

"Say what you came to say," I told Harrison.

He drew a breath.

"I'm sorry. I froze. My mother was there, and the board, and the Singapore deal is on the table, and I thought if I got through one more night."

"One more night," I said. "That's what you said at our fourth Christmas."

"I know."

"Do you know how many nights that is?"

"Kate."

"I asked you four times. I asked you to take me to your mother's house. You said soon."

"I thought you were happy being private," he said. "I thought you liked it."

"Who told you that?"

"You did. In a hundred little ways. You never pushed after I said soon."

"Because I'm not a person who pushes a man through a door he's holding shut."

That landed.

He put his hand over his mouth and took it away.

"What do you want me to do?" he said. "Tell me and I'll do it."

I looked at him.

It was the first time in twelve years anyone had asked me that in plain words.

"Thirty days," I said. "You've got thirty days, starting today."

"Okay."

"One. You say my name in public, where people hear it, and you say what I am to you."

"Now. Today."

"Two. You take me to meet your mother."

He hesitated, and I saw it.

"Yes," he said.

"Three. You don't touch me unless I ask."

His face changed.

"Not at all?"

"You touched me for twelve years in the dark, Harrison. You can wait thirty days to do it in daylight."

"Okay," he said, hoarse. "Okay."

Pete came down the stairs in his socks and his Cubs shirt and stopped at the bottom.

He looked at Harrison for a long moment.

"You're wet," he said.

"You're Pete," Harrison said. "I'm sorry I never shook your hand."

"Huh," Pete said, and went to put the coffee on.

Harrison made the call from my kitchen table at twenty to nine, in a borrowed sweatshirt of my father's that Pete found in the closet.

He did not use his assistant.

He spoke to his own press office.

"This is Harrison. I'm sending you a statement. Post it on my account and on the company's."

He read it out, slow.

"Kate Malloy is my girlfriend of twelve years. I treated her wrongly last night, in front of people. I'm sorry, and I'm going to spend the rest of my life fixing it."

"Not the rest of your life," I said. "Thirty days."

"Thirty days," Harrison said into the phone. "Post it."

At 9:02 my phone buzzed.

The statement was up, with his name on it, and mine, and the word girlfriend.

I read it three times at my kitchen table.

I thought I would feel something large.

What I felt was quiet.

Twelve years, and it was one sentence on a screen.

Harrison watched my face.

"Is that okay?" he said.

"It's a start."

At 9:04 it was gone.

I refreshed the page.

The account showed nothing posted in the last day.

Harrison's phone rang before either of us spoke.

He put it on speaker.

"Harrison," Lorna said, out of breath. "Don't be angry. Sylvia's lawyers saw it and put a hold on the account. I've got it handled. Give me until tonight."

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