Chapter 23: Room Six

The laundromat on Fourth Street smelled exactly the same.

Hot lint, cheap detergent and the wet-penny tang of the old dryers.

The bell over the door rang when I pushed it, and the owner looked up from the folding table.

She was a heavy woman in a quilted vest, and she had once let me sleep on her back-room cot for two weeks without asking why.

"Well," she said. "Look who's rich."

"Hello."

"The new landlord's been sending the electric man around." She squinted over my shoulder. "I hear he's with you."

I turned around.

Zane stood in the doorway with the keys in his hand, looking caught.

"You said you bought it the day I left," I said.

"I did."

"You're a terrible secret keeper."

"I'm getting better."

The owner snorted and went back to folding.

I walked down the row of machines to the one by the window, the one I had used for three years.

My hand went to the dented lid.

I had sat on the floor in front of it at two in the morning, holding a ring.

I had wondered what a person did after killing two people.

I had folded a thousand towels on that table.

I stood there and waited for the sadness, and what came was lighter.

It felt like nodding at an old coworker.

"Keep it open," I said to the owner. "Lease it to you for a dollar. The building's mine, I guess."

"A dollar!"

"Don't spend it all at once."

She wiped her eye with the back of her wrist and pretended she hadn't.

"You were a good girl," she said. "Quiet. Always paid your own way."

"I'm done being quiet."

"Good. Go have some fun."

I took Zane's hand and went out into the Oklahoma sun.

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