Chapter 9: Rain on the Stairs

I finished my shift at one in the morning, and it was raining so hard the ambulance bay flooded.

I walked through the rain to Pilsen with my hood up and the white envelope inside my coat.

I had been living in the studio since Sunday.

The building was a three-story brick walk-up with a broken buzzer and a stairwell that smelled of old paint.

I came around the last landing, and Donovan was sitting on the top step.

He was soaked through.

His coat was dark with water and his hair was plastered to his forehead.

His right hand was wrapped in a hotel napkin, and the napkin was red.

"I told you midnight," he said, and stood up.

"I told you I was working."

"You said you'd text me when you were home."

"I'm home," I said. "That's what a text would have said."

His mouth moved, almost a smile.

It did not last.

I unlocked the door, and he followed me in with water running off his sleeves.

The studio was one room.

There was a bed, a kettle, a shelf of books and a window over the alley.

I had paid six hundred and forty dollars a month for it for seven years.

Donovan stood on the mat and looked at it slowly.

He looked at the bed made with hospital corners and the nursing textbooks I'd kept.

He looked at the coat on the hook that I had owned before I met him.

"This is yours," he said.

"Yes."

"How long?"

"Since before I knew you."

"I mean how long have you had it while we were married."

"All seven years."

He didn't speak for a moment.

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