Chapter 20: The Rule

"Stay," Thatcher said.

He said it to the pencil lines on the wall, and then he turned his head and said it to me.

"Stay, Melina. I'm asking. Not for tonight."

"Yes."

He closed his eyes.

When he opened them he kissed me once, slowly, with the snow coming down behind him, and then he put his forehead against mine.

"Your rule," he said, very quietly.

"Not until the divorce is final," I said. "That's a year in this state, and I'm not waiting a year for you."

"Then when?"

"When I sign my own name on the paper I wrote. Not the one they wrote for me."

"That's the rule?"

"That's the rule."

"I'll hold you to it," he said.

He did.

It was April before my lawyer's office had everything ready, and he held me to it every day of it.

On the night before the signing, he locked the cafe at eight and led me to the back wall.

The window seat was half built.

Two long planks of pale oak lay across sawhorses under the lamp, and the frame stood against the wall with its sides still raw.

I was thirty weeks along, and I lowered myself onto the bare frame with one hand under my stomach.

"It'll take a splinter," Thatcher said.

"It has taken worse."

He grinned and sat down at the other end with a pencil behind his ear.