Small Things You Promised novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: Before the Doors

Lacy's heels clicked away across the parquet.

I stood by the stage with my hand on the edge of it.

I didn't remember putting it there.

"What did she say?" Missy was at my elbow. "Carlie. Your face is gray. What did she say?"

"Not here."

The chair had seen it too.

She didn't ask.

She took a key card out of her lilac pocket and pressed it into my hand.

"Fourteen twelve," she said. "My late husband and I used to keep it for the symphony."

"Take your boxes up. Change your clothes. Lie down flat for an hour, for heaven's sake."

"Ma'am, I can't take your room."

"I'm eighty-one years old, young lady. I go home at nine."

Room fourteen twelve looked down on the river.

There was a big bed, a chair by the window and a bathroom with gold taps.

Missy hung my dress on the closet door.

Dark green, with a square neck and no zipper I had to reach.

She'd found it at a consignment shop on Frazier and made me try it on twice.

"Wiley's on his way," she said. "I'm going down to get my hair done in the lobby salon, because I deserve it."

She stopped at the door.

"You going to tell me what she said?"

"I'm going to tell him first."

Missy looked at me for a long moment.

Then she nodded and went.

Wiley knocked at four thirty.

I opened the door in the hotel robe, with my hair wet from the shower.

He was in a navy suit I'd never seen and a white shirt, with the tie in his hand because he couldn't do it.

He'd traded a shift for this.

He stopped in the doorway and looked at me.

"Hi," he said.

"You say that a lot."

"I'm nervous a lot. Lately." Then he saw my face. "What happened?"

I told him.

All of it, down to the whisper.

He sat down on the end of the bed with the tie hanging from his fingers.

He didn't say anything for a long time.

Outside, a barge was going up the river, very slow.

"We don't have to," I said. "The chair has everything. She can do it without us."

"You can stand in the back. You can not be there at all."

"No."

"Wiley."

"She said that to you." He looked up. "In that voice. Like a girl ordering a sandwich."

"Yes."

"She's said it to me for ten months. Different words."

He turned the tie over in his hands. "Every time I didn't sign something. Every time I asked for a Wednesday."

He stood up.

"If I stand in the back tonight and let her say Small Comforts," he said, "what do I tell Lu when she's sixteen?"

I didn't have an answer.

"I'm not going to raise her on a lie so I can keep her," he said.

"I'll keep her the other way. Or I'll lose her the other way. But it's going to be the other way."

He said it flat and calm.

I'd learned that was the worst way he sounded.

It wasn't, tonight.

Tonight it was the best.

I walked over and took the tie out of his hands.

I put it around his neck, under the collar, and didn't tie it.

I just held both ends.

"You're sure," I said.

"I'm sure."

"Then we have an hour."

His eyes went dark.

"Carlie, you're supposed to lie down flat."

"I'm going to."

He laughed, rough, surprised, and I pulled him down by his tie and kissed him.

"Then we have an hour."

His eyes went dark.

"Carlie, you're supposed to lie down flat."

"I'm going to."

He laughed, rough and surprised, and I pulled him down by his tie and kissed him.

Not a soft kiss.

Not a careful one.

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