The Man Who Can't Let Go novel · Chapter 5 of 24
Chapter 5: Terms
On Wednesday night the storm took the power out of the whole hill, three days before Greta's gala.
Virginia was sitting up in the blue room with a book she wasn't reading.
Greta's card lay on the nightstand, face up, where she had put it down and not been able to throw it away.
I'd hate you to miss it, it said.
The lamp went dark, and the rain turned loud against the glass.
She found a candle in the dresser and went to the hall.
A flashlight beam was moving at the far end of it, and Tobias was behind the beam, checking the window latches one by one.
"The housekeeper went home at six," he said without turning. "I'm making sure the roof window in the attic doesn't leak onto your father's old chair."
"My father's chair is in the attic?"
"I kept it," he said. "He left it here when he fixed the boiler, and nobody ever sent for it."
She stood there with the candle shaking a little.
"You kept my father's chair for three years."
"I kept everything." The beam dropped to the floor. "Virginia, what do you want me to say?"
"I want you to say why you never came after me."
He turned around.
The candle lit half his face, and the half it lit looked tired.
"Not once," she said. "I waited in Portland for a knock on the door."
"I stood at the window every Friday for a year. You had a car, and a plane, and my address."
"I did not have your address."
"I sent you the divorce papers."
"You sent me nothing," Tobias said, and his voice cracked on the last word.
"I looked in six cities. I hired a man."
"I drove to your father's store. He said you'd asked him not to tell me, and I wouldn't ask him twice."
"That's an excuse."
"It's not. It's what happened."
"Then it's the worst luck in the world," she said, "or you're lying."
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