Chapter 4: Monday's Signature

Birdie Haskell closed her bar at noon on a Monday for the first time in nine years.

She flipped the sign, locked the door, and listened to every word with a bar towel wrung in both fists.

When I got to the part about the water glass, she let out a whoop that rattled the bottles.

When I got to the part about Davis's wife and son, she stopped smiling.

"A kid," she said. "He has a five-year-old kid."

"Teddy."

"And he let you cry about not having one."

I looked at the bar top.

We'd tried for two years.

Davis always said the timing wasn't right.

"I'll kill him," Birdie said. "Quietly. I have a freezer."

"You're not killing him. I'm taking his whole life, a piece at a time, and I'm going to need you to not say a word."

"Not a word."

"Or look at him funny."

"I'll look at him normally."

"Birdie."

"I'll look at him like he's a nice man I don't want to stab."

She hugged me so hard my ribs creaked.

"Who's the man in the black car?" she said into my hair.

I hadn't told her about the black car.

I didn't answer, and her whole face lit up.

"Oh, you did not."

"Birdie."

"You did. You went to Atlanta, you dumped a wedding ring, and you got laid by a stranger in the same day. I am so proud of you I could weep."

"I'm going to the house now."

"Text me every hour. If it goes bad I will drive over there with a frying pan."

The house on Jones Street was three stories of pink stucco and black iron, with a magnolia in front that was older than the Civil War.

My grandmother Odessa had raised me in it.

She left it to me in her will.

Davis had moved in four years ago and learned to call it ours.

His car was in the carriage house.

I put my key in the lock and took one breath.

Then I walked in as the woman he thought I was.

He was in the hall, still in his quarter-zip, with red eyes and a face rubbed raw by lack of sleep.

He crossed the floor and fell to his knees in front of me.

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