Daily Habits of Another Woman novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Doorstep

In front of the neighbors Willa hands back her key and ends the engagement, while Corin's mother tells her to be generous to a widow; Corin's older brother arrives with the tablet and says Corin did not write the note.

I went down first, with Bridget two steps behind me and told to stay quiet.

Bridget's building shared a courtyard with three others, and at six in the morning it was already full of people.

A man was walking a beagle.

Two women in scrubs waited at the bus shelter with their coffees.

A window slid open on the second floor.

Corin saw me and held out the thermos with both hands.

"Please," he said. "Just drink a little. You didn't eat last night."

"What's in it?"

"Milk. I warmed it. Ten seconds, a little honey."

"I told you what milk does to me."

"I know." His face crumpled. "I picked up oat milk on my way over. I didn't have time to heat it, it's in the car."

"A month late, Corin."

He lowered the thermos.

The white sedan door opened and Glenda got out.

She wore a camel coat and the pearl earrings she wore to funerals and church.

Glenda had loved Nicolette since college, and she had never been quiet about it.

"Willa," she said, in her warm, carrying voice. "Let's not do this on a sidewalk."

"You parked at a sidewalk."

"That poor girl buried her husband last month. She has no family nearby. Corin was being decent."

"At midnight."

"Grief doesn't keep office hours." Glenda tilted her head at me. "You're getting married in a week. A generous woman could spare her husband for one month."

The man with the beagle stopped walking.

The women at the bus shelter had stopped talking.

I looked up at the open window on the second floor, and the face in it did not pretend to look away.

"He's not my husband yet," I said.

"Willa," Corin said.

"Last night I found a note on our tablet, Glenda. It lists Nicolette's cinnamon rolls, her honey, her ice cream and the restaurant she likes. He has been treating me by it for years."

Glenda's mouth moved a little.

"Men are creatures of habit," she said. "He learned what a woman likes. That's something to be grateful for."

"It's what she likes. I've been drinking her milk and eating her spicy chicken for three years, and I've been sick for two of them."

Somebody at the bus shelter said, "Oh, honey."

Corin's color went.

"I didn't know it hurt you," he said.

"You never asked."

That was the whole of it, and it sat there between us.

I reached into my bag, found the apartment key and held it out.

He didn't take it.

I set it on the lid of the thermos.

"The wedding is off," I said. "I'm saying it here so nobody can tell you later I said it in a temper."

"We have a hundred and forty guests," Glenda said. "The deposits."

"Then somebody should call them. It won't be me."

Corin finally spoke. "Willa, please. I'll fix it. Tell me what to do."

I looked at him for a long time.

It was the wrong question.

He wanted me to hand him the next line, because someone else had always handed them to him.

"Here's what you do," I said. "You don't call me and you don't come to my work. If you have something to say, you write it down and send it. I'll read it when I'm ready."

"Willa."

"In writing, Corin."

Glenda put a hand on his arm and steered him toward the car.

"She's upset," she told him, loudly enough for the courtyard. "Give her a day."

The window on the second floor closed.

I thought I would feel brave, and mostly I felt tired.

Bridget came up beside me and slid her arm through mine without a word.

We turned for the door.

A truck had pulled in behind the sedan, a dark blue pickup with a first-aid sticker on the glass.

The man who climbed out of it was taller than Corin and older, with a nose that had been broken once and a navy work jacket with a reflective stripe.

I had met him exactly twice, at the engagement dinner and at Christmas.

Knox, Corin's older brother, a paramedic who worked nights and said less than anyone at that table.

He walked straight past his mother and his brother without a word.

He stopped in front of me and held out our shared tablet.

My ring was taped to the back of it in a little square of packing tape.

"You left this at the apartment," he said. "You paid for half of it."

"I did."

"Corin was asleep on the couch with his phone on his chest. I let myself in." He glanced at the ring and back at me. "I don't think you want that, but it isn't mine to throw out."

I took the tablet from him.

His hands were steady, which I noticed only because my own weren't.

"Thank you."

"Don't thank me yet."

He looked past me at the courtyard, at the neighbors, at his brother's white face and his mother's pearl earrings.

Then he lowered his voice so only Bridget and I could hear him.

"Corin didn't write that note," he said.

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