Left Behind at the Crosswalk of Life novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Suitcase

Nolan tells Delaney he watched her cross, and she leaves with a suitcase to Slade's waiting car as the neighbors watch; the stranger is on his steps with the rest.

Minnie flagged a cab with one hand and held my elbow with the other.

"Go home," she said. "Say nothing about the money. Let her walk in and lie to your face."

"Why would I do that?"

"Because once she knows you know, she'll have a story ready."

I gave the driver my street in Logan Square.

Minnie shut the door on me and stood in the rain with her umbrella, and the cab pulled away.

At home I didn't turn on the lights.

I sat on the couch with the ring box on my knee and watched the door.

Delaney's slippers were by the radiator.

Her mug was in the sink, with her lipstick on the rim.

The clock on the stove said 11:52 when her key turned.

She came in smiling, with her heels in her hand.

"Babe, you're still up," she said. "I told you not to wait."

"You did."

She kissed the top of my head on her way past.

She smelled like the cologne Slade wore.

I had given him that bottle for his birthday.

"How was the client dinner?" I asked.

"Endless. Honestly, Nol, I'm dead."

"It must have been hard to keep up with a client who runs that fast."

She stopped halfway to the bedroom.

"What?"

"I watched you cross the street, Delaney."

She turned slowly.

I watched her face look for the lie and find nothing there to hold.

"I was standing right there," I said. "You told me to run. Then you kept walking."

"Nolan, listen."

"Slade had his hand on your back before you hit the curb."

"It's not what you think."

"The bank texted me," I said. "Our account has twelve dollars and sixty-four cents in it."

Her eyes went to my phone on the cushion.

The smile came back for one second, out of habit, and then it died.

"Fine," she said.

It was one word, and it was flat.

She went into the bedroom and I heard the closet slide open.

I followed her to the doorway.

She pulled a suitcase from the top shelf and threw it open on the bed.

"Four years," I said. "You'll just leave."

"I'm not doing this scene with you."

"You took forty-eight thousand dollars."

"Half of it was mine."

"Six years of my night shifts were in that account."

"And you hoarded every dollar," she said, folding a sweater. "You never once spent any of it on me."

"I was going to buy us a house."

"You were going to buy you a house and let me live in it."

She packed and zipped the suitcase without looking at me once.

I carried nothing for her.

She dragged it down the stairs herself, with her coat over her arm.

I followed her out onto the stoop.

It had stopped raining.

The neighbor from the second floor was smoking on her steps, and she didn't pretend not to look.

A man walking his dog slowed down across the street.

Two college kids on the next stoop stopped talking.

At the curb, an Audi sat with its engine running and its lights off.

I knew that Audi, because I had helped pick the leather.

Delaney didn't look at me again.

She rolled the suitcase to the trunk, and the trunk popped open from the inside.

Slade stayed in the driver's seat.

The window slid down, and he looked at me with the face I had known since I was eighteen.

It was the same face he'd worn when he borrowed my car in college and when he stood up at my father's funeral.

"Slade," I said.

"Nol."

"Eleven years."

"Fourteen months, actually," he said, easy and low. "With her. I'm sorry you had to see it like that."

"You're sorry."

"Nobody's sorry, man," he said. "Be honest. You'd have stood on that corner forever. You always do."

The second-floor neighbor said a word I won't repeat.

Slade only smiled.

"Keep the apartment," he said. "It's cheap."

Delaney slid into the passenger seat and shut her door, and she stared straight ahead through the windshield.

I stepped off the stoop and put my hand flat on the hood.

"You can't just take it," I said. "That's my money."

"Take your hand off my car."

"Say it to the street," I said. "Say you're keeping it. Everyone's listening."

He looked past me, at the neighbor, at the dog walker, at the two kids with their phones out.

For the first time that night, his smile slipped.

"Get your hand off," he said, quieter.

Then he put the Audi in gear.

I stepped back, because the tires were already moving.

They turned the corner, and the red lights went out.

I stood there with my hand still open at my side.

The neighbor called, "Honey, do you want a drink?"

"No," I said. "Thank you."

I turned back toward my building.

Someone was sitting on my top step, under the dead porch light, with a black umbrella folded across her knees.

Her hair was wet and her coat was soaked through.

She held up her phone.

"I have the rest," Minnie said. "All of it."

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