Chapter 17: The Third Card

The elevator chimed on twenty-three at 4:41.

I was standing in my own foyer with my grandmother's music box in my hands.

The doorman had called me from the lobby ten minutes before.

He had said, in the voice of a man reporting a fire, "Mrs. Pruden, he's on his way up. He has a card."

"Which card?" I had asked. "There are two."

"A third one, ma'am. He had it cut."

I had known for nine years that Brent labeled everything. I had not known he kept spares.

The doors opened.

Brent stepped out in the navy suit, with a pretrial wristband on one arm and the bulge of an ankle monitor under his pant leg.

He saw me and stopped.

"This is my home," he said.

"The deed to it is suspended, and you're charged with forging it."

"I've lived here eight years."

"So have I."

He came two steps into the foyer and looked around the way a man looks at a thing he is about to sell.

"Where's Shelby?"

"Somewhere you can't reach her."

"She lied to the agent. She was upset."

"She wasn't upset," I said. "She was sure."

He turned his head slowly.

I had watched that face for nine years.

I had never seen it with nothing arranged on it.

"You never asked me one question about the money," he said.

I stared at him.

"Not one," he said. "Nine years. I built a company in a garage."

"And you never asked what the margin was, or who the investors were."

"You ate dinner," he said. "You talked about a chair."

"I trusted you."

"You didn't care." His voice cracked on the last word.

"Do you know what it's like to be married to someone who never needs anything from you?"

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