Chapter 7: Eleven Steps to Her Door

Nathaniel's POV

I knew the number of steps from my kitchen to her door, and I had counted them twice that night.

Eleven.

She had gone inside at nine, with her phone and a laptop Bridget had dropped off, and I had heard the lock turn.

Then I had stood in my own hallway and listened to her door.

On the other side of the door she was changing every password she owned.

I could hear her talking in a low voice to her friend.

I made myself walk away.

It was almost eleven when I took my keys and went down to the car.

My driver didn't ask where.

He knew.

The cemetery gates were locked at six.

The caretaker had a nephew who owed me a favor, and the side gate was open an inch.

I walked the gravel in the dark until I reached her stone.

I didn't say her name.

I hadn't said it aloud in four years, and my father had never once let it be said in his house.

I stood there with my hands in my coat.

"I got married this week," I told the stone. "You'd have liked her."

"She tore up a legal agreement in a county office and told my father she wanted her lamp."

The wind moved the dead leaves.

"She thinks I'm a good man."

I said the next part very quietly.

"I'm not going to let her find out."

I do not remember the crash.

I remember a dinner, and a glass of wine, and my wife laughing at something in the passenger seat.

Then I remember the roof of an ambulance, and a paramedic saying my name, and my father's face above me, grey in the light.

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