Chapter 10: The Gallery

I looked at the girl on the dock until the screen went dark by itself.

Then I put the phone back exactly where it had been, face up, and lay still.

I didn't ask.

A man who wanted to forget me wouldn't keep that photo for eight years.

A man who had written me one cold line wouldn't either.

Both things were true, and I couldn't make them fit.

"You're awake," Heath said into the pillow.

"Barely."

"You're thinking very loudly."

"I'm checking the terms." I turned onto my side. "Second term. Separate bedrooms."

"Broken."

"Third. Touching only when someone's watching."

His hand moved down my bare hip.

"Nobody's watching," he said.

"That doesn't sound like an answer."

"It's the whole answer." He pulled me against him, and it started again, slower in the daylight and in no way less.

At noon we ate cold wedding cake in bed.

At two a text arrived from a number I didn't know.

It said, Addie, I have Bev's recipe box. You left it in March. Come get it. Please. Tonight, at Hale Street Gallery. Mallory.

I turned the screen toward Heath.

"It's a trap," he said.

"Of course it's a trap." I licked frosting off my thumb. "I'm going anyway."

"Then I'm driving."

"You'll wait in the car."

"I'll wait in the car," Heath agreed, "with the window down."

The gallery was a white room on Hale Street, with forty people holding plastic cups of wine and looking at a large painting of an orange.

Mallory stood near the back in her black work dress, with a tray of cheese cubes.