Chapter 10: The Suit

"Who is Gerard to you?" I said, in the empty kitchen, with Gran's note between us.

Amory held it a long time before he answered.

"He runs the company I work for."

"That isn't what I asked."

"It's what I can say tonight."

"Then say it again tomorrow."

"I will," he said.

"And I'll find out what Gran asked him."

He meant it.

I could hear that he meant it, and I could hear that there was a locked door behind it.

Todhunter's seventy-two hours ran out on Tuesday morning and nothing happened, which frightened me more than a threat would have.

By Friday I had a folder for every house, a spreadsheet in my own bad handwriting, and a pit in my stomach about the gala.

"We need a suit," I said that evening, in the front hall.

"I have a suit."

"You have a gray jacket that fits you like a borrowed sofa."

He looked at it, hurt.

"It's the jacket I got married in."

"It's the jacket that said you'd been married by a shoplifter."

The rental shop on Elmwood closed at seven.

The tailor, a stooped man with pins in his mouth, took one look at Amory and began to talk to himself.

"Thirty-six chest, thirty-two waist, long in the arm. Who built you? A ladder?"

"I run," Amory said.

"It shows."

He disappeared into the changing room, and I sat in a velvet chair among hat blocks and wondered what I was doing.

Then the curtain swept aside.

I will tell you the truth.

I forgot how to read.

The black jacket turned his shoulders into a decision.

The white shirt made the silver of his hair look expensive, and the dark tie sat on his chest.

He looked like someone else.

He looked like a man who owned buildings.

"Well?" he said.

"You'll do," I managed.

"Pen."

"You'll more than do, you absurd man."

The tailor took the pins out of his mouth and said, quite clearly, "Oh, sweet Lord."

We walked home in the dark, along the lake wind, and he held my hand in the pocket of his coat.

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