Page 30

She's changed. Jeans and the moss-green cardigan and a clean shirt, her hair coiled up, her glasses neat. She isn't smiling. Her face has gone smooth and composed, a pleasant, polished mask I haven't seen on her before. She's holding a brown paper bag in both hands, folded over at the top.

"Egg sandwiches," Hollis says. Her voice is perfectly even. "For the road. Six hours is a long drive."

My chest drops through the floor.

"Hollis."

"You'll want to leave by six. I'll make sure I'm not in your way."

"You heard."

"The wall is thin. You told me yourself."

Every word is set down square, with no tumble, no joke, no flourish. It's the quiet, precise voice I heard in the Granary, the one she used on Grant. I've never been on the wrong side of it.

"Please don't apologize. We said Monday, the schedule moved, it's a schedule. It's better to know when to say goodbye."

"I apologize," I hear myself say. Formal. A man reading a statement. "I should have told you the moment—"

"There's nothing to tell. That's accurate. You said it to Dale and it's true, and we agreed on no lies. It's okay for it to be true."

"It wasn't true."

"Wasn't it?" She tilts her head. "You told me in the basement you hadn't figured out what you bought the house for. I haven't heard one nail go into a wall since Friday. It's okay. You're someone who goes where he's needed."

"That's how I talk to Dale."

"Is it how you talk to me?"

I open my mouth. I find nothing in it. The silence stretches out between us, over the threshold. I watch her take it as an answer.

"I'm not good at this," I say finally. My voice has gone to gravel. "I told you what I do. I go where the bad things are, because that's where I'm useful. It's the one thing I know how to be. I don't know how to stay somewhere and be..." I stop. "I'd be doing you a favor."

"Don't."

It's a small word, said quietly, but it lands like a plate dropped on stone.

"Don't decide that for me," she says. "Don't decide what I can bear, and what you can give, and then leave me with your verdict. I know how to be left, Ben. I'm an expert. I've done it the nicest way there is for five years. I'm so easy. I'm so easy to leave. I made you sandwiches."

Her voice breaks on the word. She steadies it. Her eyes are bright behind her glasses, her jaw tight. Her face is smooth and composed and gives nothing away.

"I did it for you for twelve hours, and I find that I'm done."

"Hollis."

"Rule two." She sets the paper bag down on the porch rail, at the exact midpoint between her door and mine, the way she did with the tea. "Either of us can call it off, no questions. I'm calling it. Out loud, so you don't have to wait on plaster."

"I didn't want—"

"What do you want?" She looks straight at me. "Say it in a whole sentence. Say one."

I stand in the doorway of a house I bought without knowing why and look at the most extraordinary person I've ever met. Every word I have is the wrong one. The old calm comes down over me like a shutter.

I look at her, at the bright false composure on her face and the sandwiches she made and the way she's standing like she's already said goodbye.

"I'll be out by six," I say, and I watch myself do it. I watch myself choose the door I know how to walk through.

Her mouth trembles. Then she presses it flat.