Chapter 16: Clear Margins

Cassandra's POV

I opened the door before he finished knocking.

I had been standing behind it for ten minutes, with my hand on the wood.

Gavin stood on the landing with a duffel bag on his shoulder, a cut on his cheekbone and nothing in his face that he was hiding.

"You heard," he said.

"Simon's driver turned up the radio so I wouldn't have to talk. I heard you in my head the whole way."

"I didn't come to ask for anything."

"I know."

"I can go to a hotel."

"You've lost your house and your chair," I said. "You can afford a hotel for a week. Do you want a hotel?"

"No."

"What do you want?"

He didn't answer for a moment.

"To be where you are," he said. "On the floor, if that's all there is."

I looked at the bag, the cut and the dust of his mother's hallway still on his shoes.

Then I stepped back from the door.

"There's a bed," I said. "It's narrow. You sleep on the left."

He came in and set the bag down by the door, very carefully.

For nine nights he slept on the left and did not touch me.

On the tenth he put his hand on the mattress between us and left it there, palm up.

I slid mine into it.

That was all.

It was the best night of my life, and nothing happened in it.

Three weeks after the surgery, the surgeon called on a Tuesday afternoon while I was priming a canvas.

Gavin had gone to look at a rented desk, because he meant to start a freight company of his own.

I put the call on speaker and held the phone with a green-stained hand.

"Mrs. Aldercott, I have the final pathology," she said. "The margins are clear. There's no sign it spread."

I sat down on the stool.

"Say it again."

"Clear. You may be done with this, Cassandra. We'll scan you every six months and I expect to be bored."

I laughed, and it came out wet.

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