I Was His Waiting Room novel · Chapter 1 of 32
Chapter 1: The Hot Meal
Maura brings dinner to Kiera's apartment and finds her secret boyfriend of three years kissing his ex, ends it in front of them, and signs the lease on her own firehouse, until a stranger arrives holding thirty-six invoices forged in her name.
Ronan Fahey told me he loved me on a Thursday.
On Monday his ex, Kiera Lynch, went through a guardrail on Storrow Drive.
Senior year of college she'd dumped him for a rich boy named Brendan Prendergast.
I was the one who sat on Ronan's bedroom floor with him for a month afterward.
In the hospital hallway he held both my hands and kept his voice very steady.
"She can't handle any shock right now. Just give it some time. Don't tell her about us."
I looked at him and nodded.
That was three years ago.
He made her soup. He drove her to rehab. He learned the names of all her nurses.
When I asked how much longer, he sighed.
"Maur, don't overthink it. She just leans on me right now. I'm being a friend."
So I leaned on nobody.
Every Tuesday and Thursday I brought Kiera dinner, because Ronan asked me to.
This Tuesday it was beef stew in my mother's red pot, heavy enough to make my arms shake.
Kiera's apartment was on the ground floor in Back Bay. She'd given me a key the first winter.
I let myself in with my hip and pushed the door open.
They were on the couch.
Ronan was kneeling by her wheelchair with his hand in her hair.
Her red nails were on his jaw.
They were kissing.
I stood in the doorway holding the pot.
The stew was so hot I could feel it through the oven mitts.
Kiera opened her eyes and saw me over his shoulder.
She smiled.
"Maura! Oh my God, perfect timing. We have news."
Ronan went stiff and turned around.
His face went the color of the wall.
Kiera laced her fingers through his and held their hands up.
"We're back together. Finally. Can you believe it?"
"Wow," I said.
"So when are you getting a boyfriend?" She tilted her head. "I want to see you happy too, Maur."
I looked at their hands.
He used to hold mine exactly like that under the table at his mother's house, where nobody could see.
"I did have a boyfriend," I said. "But just now, we broke up."
Ronan stopped breathing.
Kiera's mouth made a little O.
"Oh, no. Just now? Babe, I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to rub it in."
"It's okay."
"Why did you break up?"
She rolled her chair closer and patted my wrist.
"Don't throw it away over something small. Look at us. We were young and stubborn back then, and we still found our way back."
She gazed up at Ronan, all soft.
He didn't look at her.
He was looking at me.
I eased my wrist out from under her hand and smiled.
"It wasn't something small," I said. "And it wasn't young and stubborn. His heart still belongs to someone else."
Kiera laughed, a little high.
"Well. His loss."
"Yeah," I said. "It is."
Ronan crossed the room and took the pot out of my hands.
His fingers slid over the back of mine.
Slow. Warm. Pressing once.
Three years, that press had meant hold on, I'll explain later.
Tonight I knew exactly what it meant.
Don't.
Juniper was lying in the corner by the radiator.
She lifted her head when she heard my voice and thumped her tail twice on the floor.
I trained that dog. I gave her to Kiera for free, the week she came home from rehab, because Ronan asked.
Her water bowl was bone dry.
Her ribs showed under her yellow coat.
I walked past both of them, filled the bowl at the kitchen sink, and set it down in front of her.
She drank.
"Oh, she's fine," Kiera said. "She's lazy. You spoil her."
I scratched behind Juniper's ears until she stopped drinking.
Then I took Kiera's key off my ring and set it on the kitchen counter.
"I won't make it Thursday," I said. "Or after."
"What? Who's going to drive me to PT?"
"Ask your boyfriend."
I walked out.
The door hadn't closed before Ronan caught it.
He followed me down the hall in his socks.
"Maura. Maur, stop. What are you doing?"
"Leaving."
"You promised me you'd wait."
I turned around.
"I did wait. Three years, Ronan. I waited in your hallway. I waited at your mother's table. I waited in a drawer at your condo."
"It's not what it looked like."
"She just said you're back together."
He dragged a hand down his face.
"She's fragile. She just got the leg braces. If I'd said no tonight, she'd have spiraled, and you know it."
"So you said yes."
"I said what she needed to hear."
"You always do," I said. "To everyone but me."
He reached for my arm.
I stepped back, and his hand closed on air.
"Where are you going?"
"To sign the lease."
He went still.
"The firehouse? Maur, we talked about this. After her surgery. After the holidays. You said you'd hold off."
"I held off for you. I'm done holding."
"You'll lose everything you saved."
"It's mine to lose."
I took the stairs instead of the elevator, so he couldn't stand there watching the numbers.
The old Engine 19 firehouse sat on Gibson Street in Dorchester, three blocks from where we grew up.
The landlord was a retired firefighter with a cane and a thermos.
He'd been waiting since September.
Kerry Hurley was waiting too, sitting on the curb with a bottle of cheap champagne and a fanny pack full of liver treats.
"Tell me you're signing," she said.
"I'm signing."
"Tell me you dumped him."
"I dumped him."
She screamed so loud a light came on across the street.
"I quit the kennel this afternoon," she said. "On spec. Don't make me a liar."
I signed three times on the hood of the landlord's Buick.
First month, last month, deposit. Thirty-one thousand dollars became twenty-four, just like that.
He handed me a ring of keys.
The bay door groaned up on its chains.
Inside it smelled like rust and old smoke.
It was mine.
My phone buzzed a dozen times before midnight.
Ronan. Ronan. Ronan.
I turned it face down on the concrete and swept until my shoulders burned.
At seven the next morning I was still sweeping when a car door shut outside.
A man stood in the open bay.
Charcoal suit, gray eyes, a crooked nose, a thick folder under one arm.
He held out a business card. Niall Prendergast, Prendergast Builders.
I knew that last name.
He didn't step inside. He eyed the empty kennel runs.
"Maura Costigan?"
"Who's asking?"
He held up the folder.
"Thirty-six invoices. Nine hundred dollars a month. Service dog training, Juniper. Signed by you."
He flipped it open so I could see my own name, in handwriting I'd never seen before.
"My family's been paying you for three years," he said. "I'd like to see the dog."
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