Chapter 11: Mitch's Patio

On Saturday at five to two, I stood on the same back step where I had stood the week before.

The patio door was half open, and the smell of charcoal drifted out of it.

I could hear a ballgame on a speaker and men talking over each other.

Carrie stood on one side of me in a clean pair of scrubs, because she had come straight off a night shift.

Levi stood on the other, with a manila folder under his arm.

"You don't have to do this in front of everyone," Levi said quietly.

"Yes, I do."

"I mean you can still walk away."

"I did that last week," I said. "This time I'm going in."

Mitch had told me to come to the side gate.

I walked past it and went straight to the door.

A dozen people sat around the patio.

There were six guys I knew by sight, two of their wives, a girl with a baby on her lap and the friend who had unloaded surfboards.

Taryn sat at the glass table in a yellow sundress, with her feet tucked under her.

Derek sat beside her in the chair that had been mine.

He had a bottle in one hand and a paper plate in the other, and he was laughing at something.

Mitch stood at the grill with a spatula and his back to the door.

He turned around first.

"Leah," he said, loud enough for the whole yard to hear. "Glad you made it."

The talk stopped in pieces.

First the men nearest the door, then the wives, then the baby, who kept babbling after everyone else had gone quiet.

Derek looked up.

I watched the laugh go out of his face and something warmer and quicker take its place.