When Love Runs Dry novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: The Envelope

I stood in the orange light of the heater and read it three times.

Nolan didn't look at the screen.

He looked at my face instead.

"Grandmother?" he asked.

"Tobias."

He stepped back half a pace and let the cold in between us.

"You need to answer that."

"Not tonight."

"Then you need to sit down. You've gone white."

I sat on an upturned bucket by the heater.

He crouched in front of me, close but not touching, his hands hanging between his knees.

"It's something I tried to tell him two years ago," I said. "He never let me."

"Okay."

"That's all I can say right now."

"Then that's all you say." He stood up and held out his hand. "Come on. I'll drive you home."

He didn't ask one thing the whole way down the mountain.

At Opal's door he took my braid between two fingers, just the end of it, and let it go.

"Goodnight, Meredith."

"You're not going to ask?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because when you want me to know something, you'll tell me. You told me about page 14 in front of eight people."

He went down the steps.

I stood in the dark hall and typed my answer.

"Yes. My mother's boxes are still in the attic. I'm coming for them Saturday at noon."

The three dots came and went for a long time.

"I'll be here," he wrote.

On Saturday I drove the Subaru back down the river road to Greenwich.

The gate opened for me.

The lawn was perfect. The boxwoods were wrapped in burlap for winter. Somebody else did that now.

Tobias opened the front door himself before I could ring.

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