Chapter 24: Approved

I went to the Marlowe because I wanted to see it with my own eyes.

Reuben drove, and did not ask me why.

The doorman stood up when we came through the revolving door.

"Ms. Donahue. Dr. Garrick."

"Where is she?"

He tipped his head toward the far wall.

Lydia sat on the visitor bench beside the mailboxes, where the delivery men waited for signatures.

She wore a grey sweater and no makeup.

Her hair hung loose, and her hands lay in her lap, holding a small paper cup of coffee she had not touched.

She looked smaller than I had ever seen her.

She saw me and stood up.

"Maddie."

I stopped ten feet away.

"I'm here to apologize," she said. "I wrote it down. I practiced it in the car."

"Go ahead."

"I'm sorry." Her voice cracked on the second word. "For the cat, and the door. For the three years. I'm sorry I picked you."

I waited.

It was a good apology.

It was shaped exactly right, and not one word of it told me what she was sorry for in her own mind.

"Thank you for saying it," I said.

"Do you forgive me?"

"No."

She flinched.

"I don't have to," I said. "You didn't ask me for three years. You don't get to ask now."

Lydia looked at the marble floor.

Then she looked at the elevators and at the gate with the black reader.

Above them was a fourteenth floor she could no longer reach.

"I just want to go upstairs," she said, very quietly. "I left my things. My mother's ring. Daisy's blanket."

She swallowed.

"Can you tell him I'm a guest?"

"Tell who?"

"The man at the desk."

"He's right there," I said. "Ask him."

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Locked Me Out and Let Her In from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.