Page 151 of The New Place

“Thank you for your input,” Abbot says. That came, likely verbatim, from their father and his unending opinions on Abbot’s career.

“You’re going to Newbury?” Lee asks. “You got married and also hired at Newbury? What the hell?”

“What’s the noise. It’s Monday,” Aliyah says, appearing on the landing above them.

“Ned and Henry went and got hitched and Henry’s leaving us to teach at Newbury,” Lee calls up to her.

“With Ned,” Liesl says. “He’s going to work there too, and I’m going to go to college there.”

“Please don’t—you are?” Abbot asks.

“Dad says I should go somewhere better, but I’m going to go to Newbury.”

“Better than Newbury,” Lee murmurs. “Right, that exists.”

“Well, look at that,” Aliyah says. “Congratulations.”

“You have to get accepted, first,” Abbot says.

Liesl licks sugar from her finger. “I will.”

“It’s on your face, too.”

She wipes her cheeks with the back of her hand and then takes her coffee from him. “I’m going to your office.”

It leaves him standing there, Lee and Aliyah both staring at him. “Excuse me,” he says.

Lee steps in front of him on the stairs. “No way.”

“Married,” Aliyah says.

“You and Ned,” Lee says. “This is amazing.”

“And Newbury University,” Aliyah says. “We all knew you’d leave eventually, but that’s certainly a move.”

“What can we get you two?” Lee asks.

“Sorry?” Abbot asks.

“Did you register?”

“Ah. No.”

“Well, we have to do something,” Lee says. “Something for your new place, when you guys move. Oh, you must be so happy.”

Yes, their new place. That they’re getting together.

Except they very much aren’t.

“We are quite happy,” Abbot says brusquely, and he’ll just go up the other staircase, at the other end of the building. “Thank you. Excuse me.”

It’s Monday. It’s just another workday. Nothing, really, is different.

The ring sits on his finger, so odd in its brightness and its weight.

Liesl isn’t alone in his office when he reaches it, though she has occupied the chair behind his desk, her iced coffee perilously close to his keyboard.

“Steve?” he asks, letting the door fall shut behind him.