While I Couldn't Breathe, He Was With Her novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Code

Kirsten finds her door code changed to Polly's birthday, hears Nolan's "formality" excuse, and leaves with her documents.

The taxi let me out at the glass house Nolan and I had picked together.

I typed our anniversary into the keypad on the front door, the way I had every day for two years.

The lock flashed red.

I tried again, slowly, in case my fingers had slipped.

It flashed red again.

I stood there with my hand on the cold steel and understood that it was not my fingers.

My spare key was in the bottom of my bag.

I let myself in the old way, and the house smelled of lemon and warm honey.

On the kitchen counter sat a mug with a note tucked under it.

The air is dry today. I made you honey tea. Drink it while it's warm.

It was his handwriting.

The mug was still steaming, so he had made it before he left that morning and walked out the door without waiting for me.

I thought about the night I had my first attack in front of him.

He had sat on the edge of my bed until sunrise, then burned two pots of rice porridge trying to make me something soft.

I poured the tea down the sink.

I was drying the mug when the front door beeped, and I heard Nolan call my name from the hall.

"Kirsten? You're home?"

He came in fast, in the green jacket, with his keys still in his hand.

The name tape stitched above the pocket said OSTROW.

He crossed the kitchen and took both my hands.

"Your hands are freezing. Did you have another attack? Why didn't you call me?"

I looked at him.

"I called you," I said. "You cut it off."

"I was in a meeting. I only just got out." He did not blink. "Hold on, I have something for you."

He took a velvet box out of the jacket and opened it.

Inside lay a diamond necklace as wide as my hand.

I had seen it the night before, on Polly's feed, with the caption: Look what I found!

"I'm so sorry about the registration," Nolan said. "I wanted to make it up to you."

He stepped behind me and fastened the clasp at my neck.

His voice at my ear was soft.

"I've handled things with Polly. She gets a payment and she goes home in a few days."

He held up the mirror from the hall table.

The woman in it had gray skin and swollen eyes, and the diamond sat across her collarbone, too heavy for her.

"Beautiful," Nolan said.

I undid the clasp, set the necklace on the counter, and held up my phone with the screenshot on it.

"Is this the payment, too?"

His face went white.

"Kirsten, it's not what it looks like."

"Filed this morning at nine oh two. Applied for eleven days ago."

"Let me explain."

He reached for me, and his elbow caught the frame on the counter.

It fell and broke on the tile.

Glass cut across the photo of the two of us at the top of the Mount Rainier trail, five years ago, his arms around me, my hair in my mouth.

He had carried me up the last mile that day when my lungs gave out.

At the top he had said, "Marry me, and I'll carry you every time."

I took a breath that went all the way down, and I said the thing I had decided in the taxi.

"Go and cancel it tomorrow. Send her home. I'll act like none of this happened."

Nolan did not answer for a long moment.

"Polly's brother is dying," he said at last. "He's in the hospital. His last wish is to see her married."

"So you married her."

"It's only paper. It's a formality." He looked at me with the exact face he used on donors. "I'll divorce her the day it's over. Kirsten, please, just this once, understand."

I had spent five years believing that if I had him I could survive anything.

Now I had to survive him.

"We're through," I said.

I walked down the hall to the bedroom to get my passport and my documents.

He stepped in front of the door.

"Don't say things you don't mean."

I moved around him.

His phone rang in his hand.

I did not have to look.

I saw it on his face, the same softness he used to keep for me.

"Wait. I have to take this."

He went out onto the balcony and slid the glass door shut behind him.

Through the window I heard a woman crying.

I put my passport, my laptop and my grandmother's watch into a bag.

I left the ring on the counter, next to the necklace, and walked out.

Outside on the pavement my phone buzzed.

It was the station manager.

Be in my office at eight tomorrow. Bring your badge.

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