Chapter 11: Preferred Match

I woke up alone on the left side of a very big bed.

The sheet next to me was cool.

On the pillow lay a folded note in small upright handwriting.

Gone to the office. Back by six. Eat something. E.

The nightstand was bare. He had taken his phone with him.

I lay there and heard him say it again: Spam.

A man who thinks a text is spam does not turn it face down.

I held the note in my hand and then pressed my face into his pillow, which was embarrassing, and did it anyway.

By ten I was at the clinic, because I had nothing else to do with my hands.

Dina was at the front desk with her feet on a box of gauze.

She took one look at me and took her feet off.

"No," she said.

"I haven't said anything."

"You have a face. Willa Prentiss, you slept with him."

"I'm married to him."

"You've known him for a week!"

"I've known him a year," I said. "He just never talked."

She squealed and then clapped a hand over her own mouth and glanced at a golden retriever sitting in the waiting room.

"Sorry, Biscuit," she whispered.

I laughed for the first time in two weeks.

I leaned on the counter and told her only the parts fit to repeat.

The front door chimed, and Lydia came in.

She wore a plain grey coat and no makeup.

She carried a cardboard box with a leash and a chewed rubber duck sticking out of it.

"Hi," she said. "I'm not here for an animal."

"You can't be here for the dog," Dina said, looking at the duck. "That is the greatest duck I've ever seen."

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