This Is Where We Stop novel · Chapter 21 of 24

Chapter 21: The Offer

Padraig's POV

I had rehearsed the question for three days, and in the rental's one chair I forgot every word.

Mara sat on the kitchen counter with her feet swinging, eating cold noodles out of a carton.

She had kicked off her shoes the second we came through the door.

"You said you'd ask me something," she said.

"I did."

"You look like you're about to put in a chest tube."

"I feel like it."

She set the carton down.

I took a small box out of my coat pocket and put it on the counter between us.

It was flat, wrapped in plain brown paper, with a receipt taped to the top.

"That's not a ring," she said, a little too fast.

"I'd have told you first."

"Padraig."

"Open it."

She tore the paper off.

Inside were gloves, gray merino, fingerless, with a soft cuff that would fit under a surgical sleeve.

I had bought them at a mountaineering shop in Kathmandu the week she left. It was the first thing I had ever picked out for a woman without asking anyone's advice.

"Your hands are cold in every operating room," I said. "I've watched you flex them between cases for two weeks. I don't know why I noticed."

She turned the gloves over.

"There's a receipt on it."

"I left it on."

"Why?"

"So you could return them. If you wanted."

She looked up at me.

Her eyes were wet, and she was laughing.

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