Page 142 of Hushed

So he’s decided. Somewhere between last night and this morning he did the arithmetic and I came out the wrong side of it.

“Can you give me a moment?” I ask the woman.

She stops and turns. “They’re waiting.” She is practically tapping her foot impatiently.

“Let them.” I laugh. It sounds harsh. “I’m the star of the show. What are they going to do, leave if I’m not here? Are they going to pack up and go home? Will they change their verdict because I’m not very prompt like a good boy?”

She looks at the door and then back at me, like she’s not sure how to answer it. “This is not professional.”

“No, it’s not,” I admit. “But they will not see me like this. At least give me this dignity, can you?”

She looks back at the closed door, and finally says, “Okay.”

I turn away from the corridor and put my hands on the railing in the stairwell. From this landing, I can see straight down. I scan the railings all the way down for a familiar hand.

I start to sing under my breath. My voice echoes and comes back thin.

“What was that?” she asks.

I stop and clear my throat. “It’s an old song called ‘Parlez-moi d’amour.’ It’s the kind of song our grandmothers would have listened to.”

“What’s it about?” Her voice echoes in the perfect acoustics of the stairwell.

“A woman asking a man to say that he loves her.” I have to look up at the ceiling, because I can’t bear looking down for a man who’s not coming. “But she doesn’t really know him at all. She’s begging a stranger to tell her he loves her. So it’s a song about a heart breaking in real time, and I never noticed that.” I linger for another few seconds.

The tears leak out the corners of my eyes anyway. I want Levi to lie to me a little longer and tell me he loves me.

She puts her hand on mine. “I’m sorry for what they’re doing to you,” she says.

I look at her in surprise. “What’s your name?”

“Deirdre.”

“Thank you, Deirdre.” I look back at the stairwell and wipe away the tracks. “Okay. I’m ready.”

Deirdre opens the door to the same conference room where I met the rest of the department three months ago, and I walk in alone.

Chapter fifty

Levi

The Curlicue Inn is out on 29 past the tire place, and it’s forty-two a night.

I pay a week up front in cash, because a card puts a name on a screen somewhere. The man behind the desk doesn’t ask me one single question. He gives me a key on a diamond of orange plastic and goes back to his crossword.

Room 11 has two double beds, a window unit and a Bible. The coffee maker has one packet. The packet expired in June.

I put my Army bag on the bed nearer the door and don’t unpack it.

Then I sit in the truck in the lot behind the ice machine and take Alison’s box out from under the passenger seat, and I go through it one more time.

I put the money one on top, because that’s the one that does the work, and I put the whole lot in a manila folder out of the door pocket. Then I break the box down flat and put it in the dumpster.

After that I call a number that’s been sitting in my phone since June.

“Sergeant Vance.” He answers without a hello.

“Morning, Sergeant. Knight, Levi Brayden.” I give him the rest of it. Separated in August. Ninety-two Yankee, four years, honorable discharge. “It’s time for me to come back in while the window’s still open.”