I Left Him by Text, and He Kept Paying for My Father's Care novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: Name Him

Gordon signs the approval without reading the number and asks Hannah to stay away from his son; Eli walks in on the end of it and follows her into the garage to demand the name of the other man.

I went straight from my shift to the Garvey Development tower, still in my pharmacy scrubs under the gray coat.

The lobby was glass and white marble, and every person in it looked like they had slept.

On the thirty-first floor, a receptionist took one look at me and said, "Mr. Garvey said to send you right in."

I had been prepared to wait an hour.

Gordon Garvey stood up from behind his desk as I came through the door.

He was sixty-six now, silver where he used to be steel, and he crossed the carpet with both hands out.

"Hannah. Look at you."

He took my hands and held them.

His were warm and dry.

"You're thin," he said. "Are you eating? Sit, sit. I'll have coffee brought."

"I can't stay. I came about my father's room."

"Of course. Martin." He said my father's name warmly. "How is he? Tell me honestly."

"Some days he knows me."

"That's more than most. I think of him all the time. Twenty-five years he ran my sites and never once lost a man."

He pulled out the chair for me.

I sat because my legs wanted it.

I put the notice on the desk.

He didn't pick it up.

"Secured wing," he said. "Thirty days. Yes, the director called me over the holiday."

"It's three thousand one hundred more a month."

"It will be handled."

"The letter says the fund has to approve it in writing."

"Then I'll approve it in writing." He took a gold pen from the cup on his desk, turned the page toward himself and signed at the bottom without reading the number.

He slid it back across the wood.

"There. Done. You'll never have to worry about that room."

I looked at the signature for a long time.

I had come ready for a fight.

I had practiced it on the train, and I hadn't once practiced being thanked for coming.

"Thank you," I said.

"No. Thank you." He leaned back. "I know it wasn't easy, what you did for this family."

"What I did for my father."

"For both of them." He smiled sadly. "I've never forgotten it."

Something in my chest unclenched.

I think that was what he wanted.

"There's one thing," Gordon said, and his voice went gentle. "I wouldn't mention it, except you seem to be a person who likes the truth."

"What?"

"Eli's engagement will be announced in March."

The coffee had come, on a tray, carried by someone I didn't see.

I picked up a cup so I wouldn't have to look at him.

"To who?"

"A good woman. A board member's daughter, someone who understands the business. It's settled, more or less." He turned his own cup a quarter turn on the saucer. "I saw you at Birchwood on the camera feed last night, you and Eli. I hope you'll forgive an old man for asking. Please don't make this harder for either of them."

"For either of them."

"For him and for her."

"I'm not making anything," I said. "I was pushing my father's chair."

"Of course." He nodded. "Of course you were."

The door opened behind me without a knock.

"Dad."

I knew the voice before I turned.

Eli stood in the doorway in a charcoal suit, a cardboard coffee cup in one hand, and I could see he had been walking fast.

His eyes went from his father to me to the notice on the desk.

"Hannah," he said. "You didn't wait for me."

"It was nine o'clock."

"It was eight fifty."

"I was early."

"What was that about an engagement?"

He had heard.

Gordon never blinked.

"We were catching up, Eli. I told Hannah she's welcome to keep her father at Birchwood, and that she shouldn't be coming to me in person every time there's a form."

"That wasn't what I heard."

"Then you heard half. Sit down, have coffee."

"I'm not sitting."

Eli set his cup on the credenza very carefully.

"Is there a reason," he said, "that you're telling Hannah anything about my life?"

"There's nothing to tell yet."

"Then why mention it?"

"Because she's family to us, in a way," Gordon said gently. "I'd hate for her to hear it at the wrong moment."

I stood up.

"I'm going to go," I said. "Thank you for signing."

Neither of them stopped me.

At the elevator I pressed the button for the garage and watched the numbers fall.

My hands were shaking, and I couldn't have said whether it was fury or relief.

The signature was real.

The room was safe.

That was the only part that mattered.

Then the doors opened on the parking level, and I heard footsteps on concrete behind me, fast and uneven.

I didn't turn around.

"Hannah."

"Go back upstairs."

"Stop walking."

"I have a train to catch."

He caught my arm above the elbow, not hard.

I stopped.

I stood facing a gray column with a number painted on it, and he stood behind me close enough that I felt the warmth of his coat.

"I've waited two years," Eli said, low. "I'm going to ask you one thing, and you're going to answer it to my face."

I turned around.

His eyes were the same grey, and they weren't cold.

That was what undid me.

"Name him," Eli said. "The someone else."

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