Chapter 14: The Mess Room

Griffin set the red mug on his father's dining table, because it was the only thing he was holding.

"Nobody dissolves anything," he said. "Dad, you wrote the clause. It says sixty days. It doesn't say who is sorry."

Garrison opened his mouth.

"I slept one night under your roof," Griffin said to the lawyer. "You said pause."

"I said pause," the lawyer agreed.

"Then it's paused. I'm going back tonight."

Tobias smiled at him, wide and warm.

"Cuz, she lied to you for sixteen days."

"She did," Griffin said. "I'm still allowed to be married to her."

That evening he stood in Imogen's front hall with his duffel and put his boots in the tray.

He did it slowly, so she would see.

She stood at the foot of the stairs in her stocking feet. She had not asked him to come back, and she was clearly afraid to ask him anything at all.

"I'm not forgiving you," Griffin said.

"I know."

"I'm not done being angry. I'm going to be angry in your house for a while, with the rules on."

"Understood."

"I have terms."

Imogen went to the hall drawer and took out a pen, a pad, and a roll of label tape.

"Of course you do," she said. "Please. Go ahead."

"One room of this house never gets cleaned."

She wrote it down.

"Nobody straightens it. Nobody dusts it. Nobody lines up the books by height."

"The sunroom," Imogen said, after a long breath. "It faces the Sound, and nothing in it is mine. Nobody has sat in it in three years."

"Two. Anything I ask you about the island or the two years, you answer true."

"Yes."

"Three. Nobody files first. Not you, not me."

Her pen stopped.

"Four," Griffin said. "The lock on your door works from the inside, for whoever wants it."

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