My Husband Left Me Out of the Christmas I Paid For, So I Left novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: A Place at the Table

Clinton's car left Stian's driveway at noon, and I did not watch it go.

Stian picked up the envelope from the porch step and put it in a kitchen drawer without opening it.

"It's not mine to read," he said. "It's not mine to throw away, either."

I spent the afternoon at Ellie's, and she let me sit in the flour and say nothing.

At nine that night I knocked on Stian's door in my coat, with snow in my hair.

"I can't be in a house with a spare room tonight," I said.

"Mine has one," he said.

"That's what I'm afraid of."

"The couch pulls out."

"Stian."

"Or the bed does what it did on Christmas. Your choice, and I mean both."

I laughed, and then I cried, in the doorway, with my forehead against his chest.

He held me until the stove was warm.

We slept in the bed, and he kept to his side.

I woke at three and found Stian's side of the bed empty.

I went out in his gray sweatshirt and found him at the kitchen table with a mug gone cold.

I sat across from him and drew my knees up.

The light over the stove showed us both how tired we were.

After a time I said, "I did this wrong."

"Did what?"

"All of it. The money. I thought if I kept paying, they'd keep me. It turns out they were glad to keep the money, and I was the person who brought it."

"Dawn."

"I told Clinton I thought I was his family. That's what I said, on the floor. But I was never in it. I was a lease." I pressed the heel of my hand to my eye. "If I hadn't paid, what was I? Nobody would have set a place for me."

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