15 Days Before I Left Him novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Best Man

Raylan believes her, bandages a cut on her hand, and goes still when he sees the old scar on her palm.

"I never agreed," I said.

Raylan didn't blink.

"Not in July, not in August, not this week," I went on. "Roscoe started asking me five weeks ago and I said no every time. Two days ago I found out Faye is ten weeks pregnant."

He let that sit in the doorway between us.

"I thought so," he said finally.

"You thought so?"

"My mother said it too smoothly. She says things that way when she's rehearsed them." He picked up his duffel. "Can I come in?"

I stepped aside.

Raylan took off his coat and hung it on the hook by the door without being shown where it went.

He was thirty-three, five years older than Roscoe, and he looked like he hadn't slept on the plane.

"I'll make coffee," I said.

"Please don't. I'll be awake until Tuesday as it is."

"Then water."

I went into the kitchen and ran the tap over the two wine glasses from dinner.

Raylan leaned against the counter and watched me wash them.

"What are you going to do?" he asked.

"Nothing."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the one I'm giving." I scrubbed the stem of Roscoe's glass harder than I needed to. "You're the best man. If I tell you my plan, you'll have to lie to your brother, and I don't want to do that to you."

"I'm not asking for a plan." His voice was level. "I'm asking whether you're all right."

Nobody had asked me that in five weeks.

Roscoe had asked whether I was done being upset.

The glass cracked in my hand.

It split along the bowl with a small clean sound and cut straight across the base of my thumb.

"Oh," I said.

Blood ran down my wrist into the sink.

Raylan crossed the kitchen in two steps.

"Don't touch it. Where's your first aid kit?"

"Under the bathroom sink."

He came back with the white box and a clean dish towel, turned off the tap, and took my hand in both of his.

His fingers were warm, rough at the tips, and they didn't hurry.

He pressed the towel into the cut and held it there.

I could feel my pulse beating against his thumb.

He was looking at my hand, not at me, and a muscle moved in his jaw.

It was the long flight, I told myself.

"It's not deep," he said. "You won't need stitches."

"Good."

"Hold this."

He lifted the towel to look and I watched him clean the cut with an antiseptic wipe, quickly and without apology.

Then he turned my hand over to wrap the bandage around my palm, and he stopped.

He was looking at the scar.

It ran across my right palm from the base of my little finger up toward my wrist, pale and a little raised.

His thumb rested on it.

He did not move for what felt like a very long time.

"I told you," I said, and heard how thin it sounded. "A fence."

"You told Roscoe it was a fence."

"I told everyone."

"I know you did." Raylan's voice had gone quiet. "How long have you had this?"

I could have said anything.

I could have said childhood, or a long time, or I don't remember.

I looked at his hand covering mine, and I said, "Since I was eleven."

He closed his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them, he looked older than he had at the door.

Then he finished the bandage with two neat turns of tape and let my hand go.

I missed the weight of it right away, and I told myself that was the shock.

"I won't tell Roscoe what you said tonight," Raylan said. "Not about the blessing and not about anything else. I'll stand up there with him on the seventeenth if that's what you need."

"I didn't ask you to."

"I know." He picked his coat off the hook. "I'm staying at the hotel by the river. I didn't want to sleep under my mother's roof."

He took a pen from his coat pocket and wrote a phone number on the back of my grocery list, which was still stuck to the fridge.

"If you need a car at any hour, I have one. I won't ask what for."

"Raylan."

"I'm not asking for anything in return," he said. "That's the whole offer."

He stopped with his hand on the door.

"Clara. The pond. Did anyone ever ask you what happened?"

I couldn't answer him.

"Good night, Raylan," I said.

He nodded, as if I had said the answer out loud, and went out.

I stood at the kitchen counter with the bandage on my hand and the number on the list in front of me.

My phone lit up on the counter.

It was Roscoe, texting: Faye's asleep. I'll stay a bit longer. Love you.

I read it twice.

Then I put the phone face down, took Raylan's number off the fridge, and put it in my wallet behind my driver's license.

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