Chapter 22: Noon

The clinic opened at noon that day for the first time since the video.

I was standing on the sidewalk at eleven fifty-five with a paper bag in each hand.

The six people with phones were gone.

There was only a woman in a sling and an old man with a walker, waiting by the door.

"You're the husband," the old man said. "The one who got the better of that rose boy."

"That was my wife."

"I know. Tell her I want her to do my knee first."

Maia unlocked the door at noon exactly.

She saw me over his shoulder, and her whole face went still.

She wore her white jacket and her hair in the low knot.

She looked like someone who had been awake all night rehearsing a goodbye.

"Give me ten minutes," she told the waiting room. "Sir, you can start your stretches."

She walked me down the hall to the treatment room and shut the door.

Midday sun poured through the window and lay in a bright square across the floor.

"You said you'd come in daylight," she said.

"It's the brightest part of the day."

"Did the memories finish?"

"Yes."

She folded her arms.

I knew the posture.

She was holding herself up with it.

"All six," she said.

"All of it. Three years, the proposal, the whole of Delaney. I know what I felt and what I did. I'm not going to say it was nothing."

"I'd think less of you if you did."

"I loved her." I set down the paper bags. "I'm saying that to your face so you never hear it from anyone else."

Her eyes were bright.

"Wes."

"And I woke up this morning on my own, and I wasn't thinking of her. I was thinking of you at the sink with a dish towel."

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