Chapter 18: Caleb's Question

Ivy's POV

Caleb Langston stood on the landing outside my door with his hands out of his pockets, where I could see them.

Douglas had brought him up the stairs and then gone back down to wait by the car.

"Five minutes," I said.

"I'll take two."

I let him in, and I did not offer him a seat.

He looked around my kitchen, at the crooked yellow table and the drawings on the fridge.

His face changed in a way I did not expect.

"You live like this," he said.

"Like what?"

"Like you're happy."

I had no answer for that.

"I'm not here to ask you for anything," he said. "I want that said first."

"Okay."

"I came to tell you what I'm going to do. And to tell you something I never said."

He took a breath.

"When I was nineteen I sang for four people at a club on Mill Street."

He looked at the table.

"You came in the back with a coat over your head, because it was snowing. You stayed until the bar closed."

"I remember."

"You called a man you knew at the agency every day for a month."

"I only made calls."

"You told him I was the best thing you had ever heard and that he was an idiot. He signed me to get you to stop."

"You put your name on the line. You never once told me."

His voice shook.

"Then the report came out, and I stood in the snow outside that agency and said I wished you'd never been born."

"I was there."

"I know. I looked back from the car. You were still standing there."

He pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes.

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