Chapter 11: Friday

I woke to the smell of burnt toast.

Eli stood at my two-burner stove in yesterday's shirt, scraping a pan with a fork.

"Don't look," he said. "I'm not a cook."

"You're a very bad cook."

"I'm a project director. I delegate."

I sat up in bed with the sheet around me and laughed so hard I had to put my face in the pillow.

He came and sat on the edge of the mattress with a plate of eggs.

They were gray at the edges.

I ate every one.

He watched me do it, his thumb moving over the inside of my wrist.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

It was the first morning in two years that I had stayed in a bed after he woke.

I was afraid to say a single thing in case it all stopped.

"I'm still going to see him," I said finally. "Your father."

"We're going together."

"If you walk in, he'll talk to you like a son. He'll be smooth and he'll deny it all. If I go alone, he'll say too much."

"You don't know that."

"I know how he talks to me. He thinks I'm a girl who says thank you."

Eli looked at me for a long moment.

"I hate that you're right."

"I know."

"Then take this."

He pulled his phone out of his pocket, opened a recorder, and pressed the button.

He slid the phone into the inner pocket of my coat.

"It's running," he said. "Don't touch it. When you're done, you hang up the coat and walk out."

"You've done this before."

"I've watched my father negotiate for thirty years."

I kissed him once, hard, and stood.

My own phone buzzed on the table.

I picked it up.

It was an email, sent at six that morning, from a law firm with four last names.

The subject line read: Continuation of Fund Terms, Action Required by Friday.

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