A Love Lost to the Years novel · Chapter 12 of 24
Chapter 12: The Chair
He did not open the door of the house with his key.
He rang the bell, like a guest, at nine that night.
Annabel opened it in a gray sweater with her hair down and a blanket over her shoulders.
Her hands were wrapped around a mug.
"You said you'd be here whenever I wanted to talk," Kenneth said.
"I did."
"I want to talk."
She stepped aside.
They sat in the kitchen, on opposite sides of the island, and the swept floor still had a gleam where the glass had been.
He put the deed on the counter between them.
"Explain the note."
"You first," she said. "Did you read it, or did you just see it?"
"I read it. 'For the man who apologized to a chair.'"
"Ah."
She looked into her mug.
"It was the first day," Annabel said. "I came to your shop to order the desk."
"I'd planned it for days. I'd walk in cold and exact, and I'd already decided how I would use what I knew."
"And?"
"You were carrying a ladder-back chair across the floor to put it in the window, and you caught the corner on the bench. It was a plain pine chair. It was nothing."
"I remember."
"You stopped. You looked at it, and you said, 'Sorry.'"
She laughed, and her voice broke on it.
"To the chair. In an empty shop. Then you checked the corner for a scratch and rubbed it with your thumb."
He looked at his own thumb.
"I stood in the doorway and thought, a man who apologizes to furniture can't have known."
She shook her head.
"I sat in my car for an hour. Then I called the bank that held your note and told them to leave it alone."
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