Chapter 15: The Folder

I watched him button his shirt.

He did it wrong, one hole off, and he did not notice.

"You're going home to her," I said.

"I'm going home to a house I pay for."

"She made your favorite."

"She makes it when she wants something." He found his belt on the floor. "Valeria, don't."

"Don't what?"

"Don't decide what this is by yourself."

I pulled my sweater over my head and sat with my arms around my knees.

I had known this voice since the first night, and I knew where it came from.

"I decide it because I'm the one who's been used," I said. "You needed a woman who'd go into that party and burn it down."

"That isn't why."

"You still love her, Tony."

He stopped with the belt half threaded.

"I stood in her bathroom yesterday," I said. "I watched you type her passcode without thinking."

"My hands know it. My hands know a lot of things."

"You flinched when her name lit up the phone."

"I flinched," he said, "because I can't stand to hear it."

I didn't answer.

He finished the belt.

Then he crossed to the desk and crouched at the bottom drawer, the one with the small brass lock.

He took a key from his wallet.

The drawer slid open, and he lifted out a manila envelope, flat and soft with handling.

The flap was taped shut, and the tape had gone yellow.

"I've carried this for eight months," he said. "In the truck, in my coat, at the lake house in July."