The Night Before We Got Married novel · Chapter 15 of 24

Chapter 15: Forty Seconds

Nobody at the table moved.

The detective's pen had stopped on the page.

Goldie let go of my hand, and I knew it was so she could hit him if she had to.

"Say the rest," I said.

Desmond looked at me.

"Romy."

"You read a dot off a screen. Say it like a person. Say all of it."

He put both hands flat on Briggs's table.

"I was in the lobby with the donors. I went back to find Delphine. She'd been crying all week about the showcase."

"Keep going."

"I smelled smoke in the corridor. I came around the corner and the rack was burning against your door."

My left arm had started to ache, the way it does in the cold.

"You were hitting the door. You were calling for help." He swallowed. "You called my name. Twice."

Briggs's chair creaked. He didn't get up.

"Delphine came up the back stairs. Her hand was wrapped in a towel and it was bleeding through. She grabbed my arm with both hands. She said, Des, I didn't mean it, they'll put me in prison, get me out of here."

"And you stood there."

"Forty seconds."

"What were you doing for forty seconds?"

He closed his eyes.

"Choosing."

The fridge hummed.

The detective wrote the word down.

"I told myself somebody would come," he said. "The alarm was going to go. The firefighters were two minutes away. I told myself you'd get out."

"I didn't get out. He got me out."

"I know."

"You took her away. And you came to the burn unit the next morning and held my hand while they cut the dead skin off my arm."

"Yes."

"Every day."

"Every day." His voice cracked all the way. "Because I'd stood outside that door."

"Host," said the System.

I didn't want to hear it.

"Target 4 affection: 100."

The kitchen went very bright and very far away.

"Host. Target 4 has reached the threshold. You may cancel your exit by choosing him."

I could live.

All I had to do was take the hand of the man who'd listened to me burn.

Desmond was leaning toward me across the table, his eyes wet.

"Is there anything," he said. "Anything at all I can ever do, so you'll forgive me?"

"No," I said out loud.

I said it to the System.

He heard it.

He sat back.

"Get out of this kitchen," I said.

He stood up.

The detective stood too and picked up her pen.

"Mr. Holcombe. You'll come downtown with me now and correct your statement. All of it."

He nodded. He picked up his laptop and left the second ring beside the cradle, where she bagged it.

At the door he turned around.

I didn't look at him.

The screen door banged.

Goldie put her arms around me from the side and held on.

"Seven years," she said into my hair. "That man ate my Thanksgiving stuffing for seven years."

Birdie was at her grandmother's that night. Thursdays were Grandma's.

Briggs made grilled cheese, which he could do, and we ate it standing up at the counter.

Neither of us said Desmond's name.

Afterward we sat on the sagging couch with the lamp off and the streetlight coming in.

"I have to tell you something," I said. "And I can't tell you all of it."

He waited.

"I'm leaving. On November first. After the opening."

"Leaving the city?"

"Leaving."

"Where?"

"I can't explain. I want to. I can't."

He was quiet for so long that I thought he'd get up and make coffee again.

"Is somebody making you?"

"No. It's mine. I agreed to it before I knew you."

"Can you change it?"

I looked at my hands.

"I don't think so."

He turned that over. I watched him do it.

Then he reached out and turned my face toward him with two fingers.

"Okay," he said. "Then give me what there is."

"Briggs."

"Seventeen days. Sixteen. Whatever it is. I'll take it. I've been living on a newspaper picture in a visor." His mouth tipped. "This is a big upgrade."

I laughed and my eyes spilled over at the same time.

"You'll hate me after."

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