While I Couldn't Breathe, He Was With Her novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Missed Call

Calvin dropped me at my friend's building a little before eleven and went to hunt for a parking spot.

I climbed the stairs with the signed receipt folded in my glove, and my legs felt light.

I had a name in blue pen now.

On the third-floor landing, a man was sitting on the top step with his elbows on his knees.

Nolan stood up when he saw me.

"How did you find this address?" I said.

"My assistant." He looked at the floor. "I know, I know. I shouldn't have come. I couldn't sleep."

"Go home."

"I brought something."

He held out a green jacket, folded over his arm.

It was the jacket he had worn every weekend since April, and the tape on the chest was a strip of faded canvas with white block letters.

OSTROW.

"I looked at it tonight," he said. "I've looked at it a hundred times. I never once read it."

I took the jacket without meaning to, and it was heavy and smelled of pine smoke and old rain.

"Where did she tell you she got it?"

"She said it was her brother's. She said he gave it to me so I wouldn't freeze." His voice cracked. "Kirsten. I don't know what's true."

"That's the first honest thing you've said in a month."

"Please let me in."

"No."

"Five minutes."

"Say it here."

He rubbed his hand over his mouth.

"I need you to tell me what happened that morning," he said. "I never asked. I told myself it was a day I didn't want to think about, and Polly said it was nothing."

"You want me to tell you what you did."

"Yes."

I looked at him, and the old fury came up clean.

"I stood on the steps of the county office at nine fifty and I couldn't breathe," I said. "I called you. I could see you across the street with your hand on her face. I watched you take out your phone and look at my name. You looked at it, Nolan. You didn't have a signal problem and you didn't fumble it. You held the phone in your palm and let it ring until you cut it."

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