The Love We Missed novel · Chapter 17 of 24

Chapter 17: Closing

The bistro opened again on Tuesday.

I didn't go in.

I took Nellie to daycare and went to work and came home.

Every night that week, a paper bag showed up on Tricia's porch rail.

Soup on Tuesday. A loaf of bread on Wednesday. A little foil pan of skillet mac and cheese on Thursday, with no note.

Nellie ate the whole pan.

"Uncle Kee makes it spicy like you," she said.

"I know, baby."

On Monday the sixteenth, we closed on the house.

It took forty minutes in a conference room downtown that smelled like toner.

Bria's father signed without looking up.

Patrick signed across from me in his gray suit and didn't say a word.

My grandmother's ninety thousand came off the top, and then my half.

The ring and four months of Walnut Street came out of his, and his check was smaller than the ring.

He folded it in half without reading the number.

I looked down at mine in the elevator.

Then I drove to Highland Park one last time.

I'd left Nellie's spare rain boots on the hooks by the back door.

Bria was already on the porch with a man from a locksmith van, watching him change the front lock.

I didn't stop.

I went around back, got the boots and left my key on the kitchen island where he'd asked me for a divorce.

That night, after Nellie fell asleep on Tricia's couch in the middle of a cartoon, I went out on the porch.

It was cold, and the swing was cold, and I sat on it anyway in my coat.

I took out my phone and texted him.

"Come over."

He was there ten minutes later.

He came up the steps in his whites with his coat open.

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