How to Say Our Final Goodbye novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: A Billion Keeps You Warm

Wyeth asks if this is what she wants and she says yes; at her mother's hotel a survey crew arrives at 2 a.m. with proof the Bellmore is sold, closing two days before her birthday.

Nobody in the dining room breathed.

Kirsten recovered first.

She stood up, smoothed her pink dress and floated toward the door with her hands clasped.

"Wyeth. You're early. Daddy said nine."

He didn't look at her.

He was looking at me.

"Is it true?" he asked.

"Which part?"

"Any of it, Clem."

My father cleared his throat and put on his chairman's voice.

"Son, this is a family matter. Clem's made her decision. I think you'll find Kirsten is..."

"I'd like to hear it from her," Wyeth said. "Outside, if you don't mind."

He didn't wait to see if my father minded.

He stepped back from the doorway to let me through.

I walked past him without touching him.

The front hall smelled like lilies and floor wax.

The gravel drive was blue in the dusk, and his black car was parked crooked behind mine.

I stopped by my car door and turned around.

He stopped six feet away.

He always stopped six feet away.

For two years I'd thought it was manners.

The first time around, I'd thought it was because he couldn't stand to be closer.

"Go ahead," I said. "Ask."

"Is this what you want?"

"Yes."

"You want out of the engagement."

"Yes."

"And you want a billion dollars from your father to do it."

"Plus the paper. Don't forget the paper. That's my favorite part."

His jaw moved.

Wyeth Wainscott had a face that didn't give much away.

Long and serious, with dark eyes that always looked like they were reading the small print.

"You could have told me," he said. "You could have called me and said, Wyeth, I don't want this. I would have let you go."

"I know you would."

That came out harder than I meant it to.

He heard it.

"What does that mean?"

It meant that in another life, he had let me go so easily I'd never stopped hearing it.

It meant four words in this driveway and then nothing for three years.

"It means Kirsten will be very happy," I said. "She's wanted you since she was nineteen. She'll make a lovely Mrs. Wainscott. She'll post you every morning."

"I don't want to be posted."

"Then you should have read the fine print on her."

The corner of his mouth almost moved.

Then it didn't.

"Did you ever ask what I want?" he said.

"You'll have the merger either way. My father's very flexible about which daughter."

"That's not what I asked."

I opened my car door.

My hands had started to shake now that nobody but him was watching.

"Go back inside, Wyeth. Have some salmon. Congratulate your bride."

He stood there for a long moment.

Then he stepped back.

"I hope a billion dollars keeps you warm," he said.

He got in his car and pulled out around mine, and the gravel spat against my tires.

I sat behind the wheel and didn't cry.

I'd done all my crying for him the first time.

Then I started the engine and drove to work.

The Bellmore sat on the Chicago River at Wacker Drive.

Twelve stories of cream stone, a green awning, a brass revolving door my great-grandfather had shipped from New York in 1926.

My mother grew up in this building.

So did I, mostly.

I pulled into the staff lot at 10:52 and sat there with my hands on the wheel, staring at it.

The last time I saw the Bellmore, a wrecking ball was taking out the twelfth floor.

I'd stood across the river in the October wind and watched my mother's office fall into the street.

"You planning to come in, or are you haunting the parking lot now?"

Dolly Stallings was leaning against the staff door in her black vest, red hair piled up with a pencil through it, smoking a cigarette she was supposed to have quit.

I got out of the car and hugged her so hard she yelped.

"Okay," she said into my hair. "Okay. Who died?"

Me, I almost said.

"Nobody. I'm just glad to see you."

She held me out at arm's length and squinted at my face.

"You're dressed for dinner at your dad's and you look like you got hit by a bus."

"Close."

"Did he do the thing? With the sister?"

"He did the thing."

"And?"

"And I said yes. For a billion dollars and a paper that says I'm not his daughter."

Dolly stared at me.

Then she laughed so loud a pigeon took off from the awning.

"Shut up. Shut up. Clementine. You did not."

"I did."

"I need to sit down. I need a drink. I'm the bartender, I can have both."

Inside, the lobby glowed gold and empty under the old chandelier.

The doorman was at his post by the revolving door in his green coat, forty-nine years in the building and still standing like a soldier.

"Evening, Miss Clem," he said. "You're late. I was about to send out the dogs."

"We don't have dogs."

"I'd have found some."

In the kitchen, the night cook took one look at me and put a grilled cheese on the flat top without being asked.

I ate it standing up at the steel counter, the way I had at twelve.

It tasted like being alive.

I worked the desk until one.

I checked in a couple from Ohio and moved a businessman off the elevator shaft side.

I listened to Dolly at the bar teaching a bachelor party how to say no to a fourth shot.

Every ordinary thing hurt a little.

At two in the morning, the revolving door turned.

Four men in reflective vests came through it with tool cases and a laser measure.

One of them held out a sheet of paper to the doorman.

"We're here for the ballroom. Second floor."

"At two in the morning?" the doorman said.

"Owner wants it done while it's quiet."

I came around the desk.

"I'm the night manager. Nobody's measuring anything without telling me."

The man handed me the paper with a shrug.

It was on Fairbairn Hotels letterhead.

It was signed by my father.

Please give the bearer full access to the Lantern Room for pre-demolition survey. Closing date July 10.

July 10.

Two days before my mother's hotel would have been mine.

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