Chapter 21: Come Home

Rosemary's POV

I had come out to the drive ready for a speech.

I was not ready for that.

"You've been saving that," I said.

"For about a month."

"Timothy."

"I'm not asking you to say it back." His breath showed white. "I made the rule, and I broke it first."

"So?"

"So you should know which one of us lied."

I looked at the car behind him, and the dark street, and the face I had been missing for ten days.

"At the courthouse I said fine to rule four," I said. "I said it because I thought you wanted me gone."

"I wanted you to be free to go."

"What?"

"That's what the rule was for." He said it plainly, and it cost him.

"A man who needs a woman for his son's sake doesn't get to keep her afterward. I wanted you to have the door."

I laughed, and it broke in the middle.

"I said fine because I didn't want you to see that I didn't want to go."

He went very still.

"Say that again," he said.

"I don't want to go, Timothy."

He put his hand in the inside pocket of his coat and took out a folded yellow page.

I knew the handwriting before I read it. It was the legal pad, the four rules, in a hard black pen.

"The original," he said. "I took it out of the desk this afternoon. It's the only one left."

I unfolded it.

Rule one, no feelings. Rule two, the doctor's days. Rule three, separate rooms.

Rule four, we part.

I tore the page across the bottom, along the line, and the strip came away in my fingers.

Then I tore the strip in half, and in half again.

"Rule four," I said.

"Done." His voice was rough. "And one?"

"One was a lie, you said so yourself. Two and three we broke a long time ago."

He almost smiled.

The porch light came on behind me.

"Rosemary Ridley," my sister called from the doorway, in her robe, with her arms crossed.

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