Chapter 14: The Rule

Leigh's POV

I handed Jamie back at the front door of the colonial at seven-thirty on Wednesday, exactly when I had promised.

Dolores took his backpack, and Miles stood behind her in the hall with a dish towel over his shoulder.

He smelled like fried chicken.

"He did his reading," I said.

"He wants a library card for the other branch."

"I'll take him Saturday," Miles said, and then he stopped.

"I mean, you have him Saturday."

"I'll write it down," I said, and he almost laughed.

It was the first ordinary thing we had said to each other in weeks.

I went down the front path feeling light, and a little ashamed of it.

The grey car was at the curb.

Ellis had the window down and a manila folder on the passenger seat.

"Final," he said, before I had shut the door.

"The clerk stamped it at two."

I looked at the folder for a long time.

His wedding ring was not on the steering wheel.

His left hand was bare, and it had a pale band across the base of the ring finger.

"How does it feel?" I asked.

"Lighter," he said.

"I didn't know how much I was carrying until the clerk took it."

He started the car.

"Yours isn't signed," he said.

"No."

"There's still Miles's motion."

"I know," I said.

"It's a few weeks, Leigh. I can wait."

"You've waited two years."

"Then a few weeks is nothing."

He drove me to the flat he had rented when he filed, a third-floor apartment near his firm, with a couch, a lamp and nothing on the walls.

He had never asked me up before.

I had never offered to come.

He turned on the lamp and stood in the middle of the room with his keys in his hand, looking at me, ready for me to change my mind.

Keep reading free with an account. Start One Affair, One Divorce, No Way Back from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.