Chapter 6: Fair Warning

I shut the car door and started walking.

The rain came down harder.

Behind me, an engine turned over.

The black car rolled up beside me at the pace of a woman walking, and the passenger window slid down.

"Get in," Corbin said.

"It didn't happen."

"I'm not asking you to get in for something that didn't happen. I'm asking you to get in because it's raining."

"I like rain."

"Nobody likes rain this much."

I kept walking. The car kept crawling.

A man walking a wet dog stopped on the sidewalk to watch us go by.

"You're stalking me," I said.

"I'm escorting you. It's different. There's a car."

"There's a car in most stalkings."

He laughed, and I had to look at the hedges so he wouldn't see my face.

My shirt was soaked through. My hair was coming down. My mouth still tasted like his.

He drove beside me for the whole mile and a half, at three miles an hour, with his hazards blinking.

At the station he parked and walked onto the platform behind me, getting wetter.

He didn't touch me. He didn't say anything about the car.

He stood six feet away with his hands in his pockets until the train came.

When I got on, I looked back through the window.

He was still standing there in the rain, watching the train.

Margaux paid the bill on Friday at 4:58 p.m.

A cashier's check, delivered by a courier who wouldn't look at me.

In the memo line she'd written, "For NOTHING."

The owner had it framed and hung it behind the front desk, where every guest could read it.

The bridal suite took me four days to put back.

The owner sat in the doorway in her wicker chair and told me when I got a shell wrong.

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