Chapter 8: Why You Left

I changed my number by noon and my mother's by one.

By five I was standing in the lobby of Stroud Hotels for the first time in a year.

The security guard at the desk recognized me before I said a word.

"Welcome back, Ms. Ashworth," he said.

"Mrs. Stroud," said the woman beside him, and smiled.

The whole lobby had seen the video.

I took the lift to the forty-first floor.

Vaughn's office had not changed. Same glass wall, same long desk, same chair I used to sit in for the Monday meeting.

He stood by the window with a phone to his ear.

"No statement," he was saying. "She'll give her own, when she's ready."

He hung up.

"My communications director wants a response out by six," he said. "She's drafted four versions."

"Which one is the apology?"

"None of them."

"Good."

I put my bag down.

I had come up here to talk about the posts.

I stood in his office, in the room where he had proposed, and I could not keep it down any longer.

"Why did you propose to me like that?" I said.

"Like what?"

"Standing there with your list, in your office."

"I said what I had."

"You told me I was the best operations mind you'd ever hired.

"You said you'd be a fool to lose me, and then you said marry me. In that order."

"You said it like you were closing a deal."

"I had never done it before."

"And then you didn't call."

His face did not move.

"You turned me down," he said.

"I didn't turn you down. I said I needed a day.

"I went home and Dillon had put a ring on the table, and I took it. I wrote you two lines and I left."

"You left without a conversation."

"You never came to find me."

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