Chapter 7: The Cold Side of the Bed

The doctors brought Henrietta back in four minutes.

By dawn she was awake again, gray under her pearls, glaring at the ceiling.

"Stop hovering," she told them. "I've been dead before. It's boring."

Lydia laughed and then covered her mouth, because her eyes had filled.

Henrietta's sharp gaze moved from Lydia's face to Hayden's, and stayed there.

"You both look like you've been kissing in a stairwell."

Neither of them answered.

"Good," said Henrietta, and shut her eyes. "Twenty-nine days left. Go home and sleep."

The car was silent for most of the drive.

The city was gray and wet outside the window.

Hayden drove with both hands on the wheel and his eyes straight ahead.

"I need to say something," he said at a red light. "And then I need you not to leave the car."

"I won't."

"You signed in nine days."

She turned to look at him.

"Whatever she told you, you signed it in nine days," he said.

"You didn't call me, or come back, or ask me once if it was true."

"You just signed."

His voice did not rise.

That made it worse.

"I stood outside your office in the rain every morning for a month."

"And you had already let me go."

The light turned green.

He did not move the car until the driver behind them honked.

"That's fair," Lydia said.

"Is it?"

"Yes."

Her throat hurt.

"I believed a phone call over sixteen years of you. I didn't ask."

"I was afraid of what you'd say."

He drove on.

At the next corner he put out his right hand across the console, palm up.

She took it.

Neither of them spoke again until the house.

The housekeeper had gone to bed.

The east wing was cold and dim, and the white roses on the dresser had dropped petals on the wood.

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