Chapter 22: What She Didn't Say

"Say something," Eli said.

He had come down the hotel steps one at a time, with his hands in his coat pockets.

He stopped a yard from her on the wet pavement.

"He asked you to come home," he said. "In front of everyone. I couldn't hear what you told him."

"You think I went back to him."

"I think if he asked again tomorrow, with the tears and the plate of spaghetti, you might."

His voice was steady, and the steadiness cost him.

"I'd understand it," he said. "It's six years."

Matilda looked at him for a long moment in the cold.

"Drive me somewhere," she said.

"Where?"

"The glass house."

He drove out along Shore Road with the heater up, and neither of them spoke.

They passed the stop sign by the lighthouse where she had read his first text.

The house stood dark against the bay, and every pane showed the water twice.

He let her in through the side door, where he had once held out her scarf.

The long room was empty now, with Cora's boxes gone from the hall and the table cleared.

Matilda walked across the glass floor to the wall.

She stopped on the exact spot where she had stood with a tray of lemon bars.

She turned around.

"Ask me what I told Zach," she said.

"What did you tell him?"

"That the ring was the only thing in his pocket I'd paid for." She almost laughed.

"And that he could keep it," she said. "I said it so quietly the microphone couldn't catch it. I didn't want to give him a speech."

"Matilda."

"I've been saying no to him since four in the morning, a month ago, in the dark."

She crossed to him.

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