I Left Long Before You Looked novel · Chapter 8 of 24

Chapter 8: Three Steps Apart

At eleven that night, Sadie knocked on our apartment door twice, and I knew she'd asked Cal first.

Cal was already on the couch with his laptop closed and an expression of enormous innocence.

"I said twice was fine," he said. "Three times is a threat."

I opened the door.

She stood in the hall in her bakery sweatshirt with flour on the cuffs and nothing in her hands.

"I'm not here to touch you," she said. "I came to answer you."

"You didn't answer anything on the trail."

"I know. I can't tell you what you asked." She took a breath. "But I can tell you something else, if you want it. Something you never asked."

I stood in the doorway and thought about closing it.

Behind me Cal lifted a hand and pretended to sleep.

"Five minutes," I said.

We sat on the stairwell, three steps apart, with the building humming behind the wall.

Sadie put her hands between her knees.

"You asked me why I know how to do that breathing," she said. "You never asked me what it was like to wake up on the tenth of June."

"Don't make it about you."

"I'm not. You asked me for nothing for eleven years, and you left, and it's the only thing I can tell you that's true." She looked at the wall. "I woke up at six and went to your house with a coffee, because I wanted to say sorry in person for the boat."

I said nothing.

"Your mother opened the door. She was already dressed. She said, He's gone, Sadie, he took the six o'clock train."

Her voice stayed even, and her hands did not.

"I thought, he'll be at the end of the street. I thought, he'll be at the diner. For about a minute I thought it was a joke, because you'd never leave me. You would have said something. You always said something."

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