Chapter 26: The Back Bedroom

At ten that night, the girls were asleep, and Odette was on my couch with the baby monitor and a glass of wine.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Across the hall."

"With your shoes on."

"To tell him no."

"Take your time," Odette said, and she turned up the volume on the monitor.

I crossed the hall in my stocking feet with the brace on my knee and knocked once.

Conal opened the door of the back bedroom in an undershirt and old jeans, with a pencil behind his ear.

He had been doing the girls' homework sheets at the desk, because they had given him some.

"Leandra."

"I came to tell you no."

"All right."

"I mean it. This is too soon, and I haven't forgiven you, and I won't have it said that I gave in because you sold a hotel."

"All right," he said again, and he did not move out of the doorway.

He did not reach for me either.

He stood there with the pencil behind his ear and waited, and it made me angrier than anything he could have said.

"You're supposed to argue," I said.

"You told me I wouldn't."

"I know what I told you."

I turned around and walked to the stairs.

I got as far as the first step, and I stood with my hand on the rail and listened to the old building tick.

Then I walked back.

He was still in the doorway.

"I said no to forgiving you," I said. "I did not say no to this."

"Leandra."

"The divorce papers are in my drawer. I haven't filed them. Don't read anything into that."

"I won't."

"Read a little into it."

He laughed once, low, and I took him by the front of his shirt and pulled him back into the room and shut the door with my heel.

He held my face in both his hands before he did anything else.

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