Three Breakdowns A Year Was All I Was Allowed novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: Volume One
Pia picked a diner on the east side that stayed open all night.
She sat in the last booth with her back to the wall, in a gray sweatshirt, with no blazer and no lipstick.
Luther parked his truck under the sign, where I could see it through the window, and stayed in it.
"You brought backup," Pia said.
"I brought a ride home."
"That's fair."
She had a canvas bag on the seat beside her, and both her hands were wrapped around a coffee she was not drinking.
"I resigned at noon," she said. "He took it very well. He said I was reacting, and he hoped I would take a few weeks to rest, and that my place would be kept."
"Why are you here?"
"Because of a card."
She slid her wallet across the table and opened it.
Behind the clear flap lay a laminated rectangle I knew.
Three circles, in gray ink.
Two of them were punched through.
"That's mine," Pia said. "I've carried it for six years. He gave it to me in his office the week my marriage ended. He said I was allowed two a year, because I was a clinician and ought to know better."
I did not say anything.
"He punched the second one last Thursday, when I asked him what the cheque memo meant. I had written it myself. Then I stood in his kitchen and heard how it sounded out loud."
She took the canvas bag onto her lap and set a notebook on the table between us.
It was black, with a cracked spine and an elastic band gone loose.
It was older than the one he carried, and softer at the corners.
"Volume One," she said. "He keeps them in a safe at the clinic. I know the combination because he used my birthday."
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