Chapter 12: The Door

He was sitting at my kitchen table with the lights off.

I flipped the switch, and he stood up so fast the chair fell over.

"Willa."

"Don't," I said. "I'll ask you one question, and you'll answer it."

"All right."

"Why did you say yes to me?"

He looked at me for a long time.

"At the hospital," he said. "When you said 'him.'"

"Yes."

"Because I'd been trying to get into that house for fourteen months. You handed me the door."

I sat down.

It was the strangest thing.

I had expected to scream, and instead I sat very still and my hands were cold.

"My sister vanished fifteen months ago," Jerome said. "After she married Tate Winfield."

"Her letters stopped, and her number was disconnected. Tate wouldn't talk to me."

"So you went through Margo."

"I went through Margo."

He didn't look away.

"I let her think I loved her. I was kind to her for fourteen months, and it was a lie."

"You stood at that elevator." My voice came out hard.

"I walked out of that room with my life in pieces, and you stood there with a coffee."

"You knew exactly whose family I was walking into."

"Yes."

"You asked if she was all right. Before you asked me."

"Yes."

"You rode my bus, Jerome. You sat in my landlady's kitchen."

"You lied to a woman who spent thirty years writing down what people swear is true."

"I know."

"You told me you'd lost a sister," I said, "and then you let me hold your hand."

He shut his eyes.

"I'm not asking you to forgive it," he said. "I'm asking you to let me tell you the rest."

"Tell me."

"At the luncheon I had a choice."

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