“We already did this.”
There was no satisfaction in hearing him finally speak plainly.
I would have given almost anything for him to have found that courage a week earlier. A month earlier. While his father could still answer the telephone.
Khloe crouched beside my chair.
Her perfume was the same one I had smelled when she handed me the gloves.
“You’re upset. I understand. We can put you in the guest room tonight. We can arrange a repayment schedule.”
“The guest room?”
She paused.
“It needed clearing.”
“What was in it?”
Nobody answered.
Lydia looked away.
I pictured an ordinary bed beneath a dry ceiling. A window I could stand beside. A door that closed without catching on a concrete floor.
Khloe put her hand on my knee.
I lifted it away.
“You cannot give me a room in exchange for my signature.”
Her face changed. The pleading vanished so completely that I wondered how often I had mistaken effort for kindness.
“You’ll be alone,” she said.
Ethan flinched.
I stood.
“Tonight I’ll be in a hotel.”
Mercer carried my handbag. Lydia took one suitcase, Ethan the other two. Khloe remained beneath the chandelier while we walked out.
At the car, Ethan waited for me to say something that would make him my little boy again.
I could not.
“You need your own lawyer,” Mercer told him.
Ethan nodded.
“Mom, where will you go tomorrow?”
“I’ll decide tomorrow.”
I let him put the suitcases in the trunk.
I did not let him come with me.
