Chapter 14: What He Left

He came back twenty minutes later.

I was at the register with my crutches under my arms and the check already paid.

The door banged, and the cold came in with him. He had snow on his shoulders and no coat.

He did not say my name.

He took his phone from his pocket and dropped it in the paper bag.

He rolled the top down twice and set the bag on the counter in front of the cashier.

"Hold that for me," he told her.

The cashier looked at me. I looked at him.

"I called the ER from the car," he said. "No one by her name had come in."

"And?"

"I called her mother, and her mother said she'd go look. Then I came here."

"You're late for dessert."

"I'm late for all of it," he said. "I know."

We walked to my building with my crutches loud on the salt.

He stayed a half step behind, with his hands in his pockets so they'd stay out of it.

At the top of the stairs above the laundromat I unlocked my door.

I turned in the doorway so he couldn't pass.

"Say it," he said. "Whatever you didn't say in the ward. I'll stand here."

"You asked how long I'd punish you."

"Yes."

"I wasn't angry, Graham. Angry would have been easy.

"I sat at that table for four minutes with the bread.

"The whole room watched the woman whose man got up before it was cold."

He did not look away.

"I wrote you a card that morning," I said.

It was still in my coat pocket, on the hook by the door.

The corners had gone soft from three weeks of being carried.

I threw it at his chest.

He caught it and opened it.

It said, in my handwriting, Two years. I'd like a third.

His jaw worked while he read it.

"I'd have said yes in the first minute," he said.

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