He Called Himself Blind and Kept Me Poor, So I Let Him Watch Me Leave novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Spare Room

Kelsey comforts Brinley and says Floyd made her swear; Brinley sets her terms by text, and Monday Floyd is waiting in the Lindqvist lobby with a check.

"Told me what?" I said.

Floyd put a hand on the kitchen counter.

"Kelsey knew. She's known since February. She drove me to the clinic and sat in the waiting room both times."

My phone buzzed again.

I'm freezing, Brin.

I opened the door.

Kelsey stood in the hall holding my coat over one arm and her purse over the other, with her mascara already running.

She looked at Floyd, and then at me, and then she dropped the coat and put both arms around my neck.

"I'm so sorry," she said into my hair. "I hated every minute of it. I should have told you in February."

"You knew," I said.

"He made me swear."

"I did," Floyd said behind me. "That part's true."

"He cried, Brinley. He said you'd leave. I thought if I told you, I'd be the one who broke you up." She pulled back and wiped her face with her wrist. "I thought I was keeping you together. I was so stupid."

I let her hold my hands.

She had held them in the dorm the night my mother's test results came back, and she had held them at the funeral.

Kelsey was the one who had introduced us at her birthday three years ago and told me Floyd was the nicest man she knew.

"Come stay with me," she said. "I've got the spare room made up. You don't have to look at him tonight."

I looked at him anyway.

He stood by the stove with his hands at his sides, saying nothing, and I thought, he should say something.

He should say my name, or that he was sorry, or that I was wrong.

He said nothing at all.

So I picked up my coat and my duffel and went with her.

Kelsey lived in a clean white apartment in Grandview.

The spare room smelled of laundry soap.

She made me tea and put a pair of her pajamas on the bed.

She did not ask me one question I could not answer.

At midnight I sat on the edge of the mattress with my phone in my lap and wrote to Floyd.

I wrote it three times and kept the shortest.

You owe me $31,400. I want it by January 1st. Don't call me. Don't come to my work. If you have anything to say, say it to Hank.

The dots appeared at once, and then they stopped, and then they appeared again.

His answer came after four minutes.

Understood. Every cent.

I read it twice.

He had not argued and he had not asked for another chance.

I could not decide if that made me feel better or worse.

Through the wall I heard Kelsey in her kitchen, running water, and a soft chime from her phone.

She talked quietly for a minute.

When I went to the bathroom, I saw her at the counter with the phone turned face-down and her hand pressed flat on top of it.

"Work," she said brightly. "Payroll never sleeps. Go back to bed, Brin."

I went back to bed.

I lay awake thinking about what was left in my account, which was fourteen dollars.

Then I thought about the lunches I had skipped.

On Sunday I did laundry in Kelsey's machine.

Kelsey made pancakes and told me about three men she thought would be nicer to me than Floyd.

She paid for the groceries without asking.

By Sunday night I could not remember the last time anyone had paid for something of mine without a speech.

I walked into work on Monday with my hair wet and a clean cardigan from Kelsey's closet.

Hank was already at his desk.

He took one look at me and slid a wrapped cinnamon roll across the divider.

"My wife made too many," he said.

It was a roll and not a speech, and I took it.

I was halfway through it when the receptionist's voice came over the intercom.

"Brinley Pembroke, there's a visitor for you in the lobby."

I knew who it was before I went downstairs.

I took the stairs anyway, because the elevator would have given me time to think.

He was standing in the middle of the Lindqvist lobby in his canvas jacket with no cane.

Behind him were the security desk and the sixty people who worked on the first three floors.

He held a white envelope in one hand.

When he saw me come through the stairwell door, he did not look at the floor or at the wall.

He looked straight at me, and he held out the envelope.

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