Chapter 19: The Night

Maggie's POV

I read all six apologies that evening, standing at the kitchen counter while the locksmith packed his tools.

Each one said some version of I'm sorry, I should have told you, please forgive us.

I didn't answer a single one.

I had spent eight years answering every message the minute it came in.

When the locksmith handed me my new keys, I locked the front door from the inside and stood in the quiet hall.

It was my house, and nobody was in it but me.

I waited to feel lonely.

What I felt was awake.

Ian had driven his son to Ian's sister's at five, so the boy could sleep there, and then he had come home alone.

The week had been too much for a six-year-old, he'd told me at the door.

He had said it without looking at me, and I had understood he was telling me the house would be empty.

I put on the green dress again and then took it off and put on jeans and my gray cardigan.

I walked the four blocks to his house in the last of the light.

It was a narrow brick row house with a pot of dead geraniums on the step and a truck at the curb.

I stood on the walk for a minute.

Then I climbed the steps and knocked.

I heard him cross the floor.

The door opened, and Ian stood there in a gray T-shirt with his sleeves pushed up, and his scarred forearms were bare.

"Maggie."

"I'm knocking," I said.

His face changed, slowly.

"You said you'd knock now," I said. "So I did. It's your turn to open the door."

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