Chapter 4: The Closing Deposit

Zack's grip on my wrist tightened, and then a bigger hand closed around his forearm.

"Let go of her," Malcolm said.

He did not raise his voice.

Zack looked at his brother, and his fingers opened one at a time.

"Stay out of it, Mal."

"I've been out of it long enough."

I did not stop to hear what that meant.

I walked up the aisle with the shoes in my hands and Dot behind me, and nobody in the ballroom said a word until the doors swung shut.

By eight that night I was sitting at Dot's kitchen table in sweatpants, with my dress hung on the pantry door.

Her house smelled like cinnamon and radiator heat.

I had cried in the car, and in the shower, and for ten minutes into a dish towel.

The knock came at the back door at a quarter past eight.

Malcolm stood on the step in a flannel shirt, holding my suitcase in one hand and the garment bag from the honeymoon in the other.

He had changed out of the suit, and he smelled like cut wood.

"They were still in the suite," he said. "I thought you'd want your own toothbrush."

"Come in," Dot said, from the stove. "You're letting the heat out."

He set the bags by the wall.

I noticed that he wiped his boots on the mat for a long time before he stepped across the kitchen floor.

"Did you eat?" Dot asked him.

"I'm fine, ma'am."

"That was not the question."

He sat down at the end of the table, across from me, and she put a plate of meatloaf in front of him.

I looked at my hands.

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