A Decade For Nothing novel · Chapter 15 of 24
Chapter 15: A Booth at the Back
I picked a diner off Route 2 that stayed open all night, where nobody I knew had ever eaten.
Joel took the booth by the window and ordered pie he had no intention of finishing.
I took the one at the back, facing the door, with my phone recording in my shirt pocket.
Macy came in at ten past eleven in a grey hoodie, with her hair scraped back and no makeup.
She looked about nineteen, and I made myself remember what she had done on a hundred and forty phones.
She slid into the seat across from me and looked at Joel's back.
"Who's that?"
"A friend who eats pie."
"I said alone."
"You said anywhere I picked," I said. "I picked here."
She put both hands around the water glass the waitress left.
They were not steady.
"He knows," she said. "Lydia took the coat. He knows she saw us in the kitchen. He hasn't raised his voice once, which is how I know it's bad."
"What did he do?"
"He took my keys to the condo. It's his building, he said, so it's his call. He's sending me to Scottsdale on Monday, to a house he owns. I'd have a nurse and a car and a lawyer who works for him."
"That sounds generous."
"And when the baby comes, the lawyer says Gordon will have custody if I'm 'unwell,'" she said. "He already has a doctor who'll write it. He's been planning that since March."
She said it flatly, and for the first time I believed her.
"You called the Brecken," I said.
Her eyes dropped.
"Yes."
"In a cheerful voice."
"He told me to sound like someone who'd done it a hundred times. He said, Say the name. Say Harrow. He wore your coat, and I held the door, and I hated every second."
"Why me?"
She looked up then, and for the first time her face was ordinary and tired, with nothing arranged on it.
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