Shadow of Her: When He Realized Too Late novel · Chapter 15 of 16

Chapter 15: Three Dinners

"I don't have a home with you," I said.

Langston flinched.

"I know you're angry."

"I'm not angry."

"Then what?"

I looked at him for a long moment.

A kid laughed somewhere behind me, loud and happy.

"I'm finished," I said.

I went to find the kids.

He didn't follow me that day.

He came on Christmas Eve.

Hargrove's closed at three that afternoon.

By six the shop was dark except for the kitchen, where Wesley and I were scraping down the steel table and arguing about the radio.

Someone knocked on the front glass.

I went out to see.

Langston was standing under the green awning in the snow.

He was holding a big blue Dutch oven with both hands, the lid on, a kitchen towel around the handles.

I unlocked the door but didn't open it all the way.

"Langston."

"Merry Christmas." He lifted the pot a little. "I made you something."

"You made it?"

"Our housekeeper showed me. I burned the first one." His mouth moved in a crooked almost-smile.

"It's beef stew. Your grandmother's recipe. She had it in one of your binders. She said you wouldn't mind."

I didn't say anything.

The snow was sticking to his hair.

"Can I come in?" he said. "Just for a few minutes. I just want you to taste it."

Behind me, the kitchen door creaked.

I knew without turning that Wesley was standing in it.

"I'll tell you about the first time I made that stew," I said.

Langston's face went still.

"It was our second week of marriage. I cooked it all afternoon. You ate four bites and said it was fine."

"Then your phone rang and you left."

"Annabel."

"Twice more after that," I said. "Once I ate alone at midnight. Once you came home with Jillian."

He looked down at the pot.

"I remember," he said, very low.

"I scraped that one into the trash. You were upstairs changing your shirt."

He closed his eyes.

"I'm not saying this to hurt you," I said. "I'm telling you why I can't taste it."

"It's just stew."

"No. It's the fourth time."

He stood there in the snow with the pot in his hands.

"I would do anything," he said. "Anything."

"I know. But I don't need anything from you."

He nodded slowly.

He looked past me, through the dark shop, to the man in the kitchen doorway.

He looked for a long time.

"Him?" he said.

"That's not your business anymore."

He took that too.

He bent and set the pot down very carefully on the step, just outside the door.

"She would kill me if I threw it out," he said.

Then he walked back to his car through the snow.

I locked the door.

I stood there with my forehead against the cold glass until his taillights turned the corner.

When I turned around, Wesley was right there.

He'd come out of the kitchen without a sound.

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