She Steps Out Of Betrayal's Shadow To Rebuild Her Broken Home novel · Chapter 3 of 24
Chapter 3: Out the Front Door
She walks out of the hospital lobby past her husband and his security, and Zachary drives her to the estate where the maple used to stand.
"Sixth floor," Melinda whispered. "The VIP wing. They're moving me at midnight."
"Stay there," Zach said. "I'm coming up."
"They'll stop you at the elevator. You know they will."
"Then walk down. The stairwell by the vending machines. I'll be in the lobby."
The line clicked off.
Melinda pulled the IV tape from her hand and pressed the spot with her thumb. She hadn't known she could do that, and she did it anyway.
The night nurse was in the doorway. It was the same one from the afternoon.
She had a cardigan over her arm and a pair of paper slippers in her hand.
"I didn't see you," the nurse said. She put them on the bed. "The stairs are to the left. Go now."
"Why are you helping me?"
"Because I read your chart and I read his instructions, and they don't match."
Melinda put on the cardigan and the slippers and walked straight out into the hallway.
Nobody stopped her.
The stairwell was cold and smelled of bleach.
She went down six flights holding the rail.
Her legs shook the whole way.
At the bottom she pushed through a steel door.
The lobby was bright and almost empty. There was a night desk, a man asleep in a chair and a family of three whispering by the fountain.
The front doors were thirty feet away.
Behind her the elevator chimed.
"Mindy."
Leland came across the marble in his grey coat, fast but not running. Two men in dark jackets walked behind him.
"Sweetheart, stop. You're confused."
Melinda kept walking. At the middle of the lobby she turned around.
"I'm not confused," she said.
She said it loudly enough for the desk clerk and the whole family to hear.
"My name is Melinda Harlow Crane. I'm twenty-nine years old. It's March. I know I've lost ten years, and I know I'm leaving."
The woman by the fountain stared. The man in the chair woke up.
Leland lowered his voice and used his soft smile.
"She has a brain injury. She doesn't know what she's saying. Please, don't be alarmed."
He nodded once to the men behind him.
One of them reached for her arm.
"Lee."
Bianca had come out of the second elevator in a coat over her pajamas. She laid her good hand on Leland's wrist and held it there.
"Not in front of people," she said. "Please. Think of the hotel."
Leland's jaw worked.
It was a very small pause, and it was the only one Melinda saw all night.
The security man dropped his hand.
The revolving door turned and a man in a work jacket came in on a wave of cold air.
He was six foot two and broad through the shoulders, with brown hair cut short.
A scar crossed his left knuckles.
He stopped ten feet from her.
For Melinda, the boy who had stood at the fence yesterday had grown ten years in one breath.
"Del," Zachary said.
"Zach."
Leland stepped between them.
"You're not allowed in this building, Maddox. I'll have you arrested."
"Go ahead." Zachary didn't look at him. He kept his eyes on Melinda. "Do it in front of the desk clerk and the man in the chair. I've got time."
The clerk had picked up her phone. She held it at chest height.
Leland looked at the phone and at the family by the fountain.
He fixed his face into something gentle and sorry.
"Mindy, go if you must," he said. "Go back to your gatehouse and your old friend. You'll be tired and hungry by morning, and I'll be waiting."
"I'm not coming back, Leland."
"Of course you are. It's your home."
Bianca's lips were pressed together. She didn't look at Melinda.
Zachary took off his jacket and held it open.
Melinda walked to him, and he put it around her shoulders without touching her skin.
It smelled of cut wood and engine oil. It was the smell of the barn behind her father's house.
They walked out through the doors together into the freezing night.
His truck was parked at the curb with the engine running. He opened the passenger door and turned the heater to high before he climbed in.
For a long while neither of them spoke.
The city went by in stripes of orange light.
"You called me forty-one times," Melinda said at last.
"I did."
"Why?"
His hands tightened on the wheel.
"Not tonight," he said. "You've been awake a day. I'll tell you when you can keep it."
"That's not fair."
"I know."
She leaned her head on the cold window and watched the buildings thin out.
Then came highway, and dark hills with the river somewhere below.
It was nearly two when they reached Rhinebeck.
Zachary turned off the road at two stone gateposts she knew by heart.
There was a new sign bolted to the left one, lit by a small spotlight.
CRANE ESTATES. PRIVATE EVENTS. WEDDINGS. GALAS.
Past the gate the long drive was lined with paper lanterns on wires.
At the back of the house, in the headlights, there was an enormous white tent where the lawn should have been.
Zachary stopped the truck.
"Don't look," he said gently.
She looked.
Under the tent's edge, where the weeping maple had stood for a hundred years, there was a stump as wide as a dinner table.
Someone had set a flower arch beside it, and a banner hung across the arch.
It read: HAPPY TENTH ANNIVERSARY, LELAND AND MELINDA.
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