I Left Him by Text, and He Kept Paying for My Father's Care novel · Chapter 10 of 24

Chapter 10: What I Signed

Dad was asleep when I went in, his hand curled on top of the blanket.

I stood over him for a minute.

Then I went back out to the lobby, where Eli was waiting with his coat still on.

"Tell me," he said.

I sat on the vinyl bench by the window.

He sat at the other end of it, a careful two feet away.

"Two years ago in December," I said, "your father came to my apartment."

"He did what?"

"He brought a pastry box. He sat on my couch. He was kind."

Eli's face didn't move.

"He said Dad's insurance would run out in a month. He said Birchwood cost almost ten thousand dollars. He said the Garvey retirees' fund would pay all of it, for life, with no strings."

"There was a string."

"One."

"What was it?"

"I had to end it with you that day. By text. I had to say there was somebody else, so you wouldn't come after me." I looked at my hands. "And I could never contact you again."

The lobby clock ticked.

I heard Eli breathe in, and I heard him not let it out.

"He told you I knew," he said.

"He said you'd been told the price. He said you'd told him it was my choice."

"I never heard of any of it."

"You didn't?"

"Not a thing." His voice was very quiet. "I never agreed to a price, Hannah. I would have burned the building down."

I looked at him.

It was the first time in two years I had let myself check his face for a lie.

There wasn't one.

Something I had carried since December, small and heavy and cold, shifted in my chest and began to come loose.

"I believed him," I said. "He had a letter from a lawyer. He had Dad's name on a form. He said you were relieved."

"Relieved."

"That's the word he used."

Eli put the heel of his hand against his eyes.

"I got a text," he said. "From a woman I'd have married in a week. I thought I'd been cheated on. I thought I'd been so bad at loving you that you found a man named whoever."

"There was no man."

"I know that now."

"I wrote it in the break room. I threw up in the staff bathroom after."

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