He Left at 2 AM for Her Tampons, So I Left for Kenya novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: The Corner of Our Street

"Say it here," Clayton repeated.

He stood up off the step, slowly, with a hand on the rail.

Marissa looked around the porch.

She looked at Wanjiru, and Alec, and the sixty faces in the yard, and she found nothing on any of them she could use.

"Clayton," she said. "You're upset. We're all upset."

"Your car was in the shop."

"What?"

"That's why you were stranded. You told me. Your car was in the shop for the brakes, and you'd taken a cab to a friend's, and the cab left you at the pharmacy."

"Yes. Exactly."

"You told me that for three years." His voice had gone flat. "I just remembered something, Mar."

"Honey, please."

"When I left our house that night, I turned left at the end of our street. There was a silver Corolla under the streetlight at the corner, with its lights off."

Marissa didn't answer.

"I thought, that looks like Marissa's car. And then I thought, no, hers is in the shop." Clayton pressed the heel of his hand against one eye. "Two minutes later you called me again, to say where you were."

"It was somebody else's car."

"It had the dent. The one from the Dairy Queen. I made fun of that dent for a year."

"A lot of cars have dents."

"Marissa."

"I was..." She stopped.

I had waited three years to see her face without anything arranged on it, and I did not enjoy it as much as I had imagined.

It went slack, and then it went white, and the kind eyes simply went out.

"I was in the car," she said, "at the end of your street."

Somebody in the yard drew a sharp breath.

"Since when?" Clayton said.

"Since eleven. I'd been there a while."

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