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“You’re staying?”
“I am staying married to you.”
“That wasn’t exactly my question.”
“I know.”
I look toward the stairs, at Tova’s missing shoes.
“We talk to her tomorrow.”
“Together?”
“Yes.”
“I love that kid. Her crap all over my kitchen. Her telling me my music is old.”
“It is old.”
“There she is.”
His thumb moves over my knuckles.
“And tonight?”
I squeeze his hand.
“Tonight you say yes.”
“Ask me.”
This one is easier.
“Will you take me upstairs?”
He looks at the glass on the counter, then back at me.
“Bring the water.”
Chapter forty-nine
Colt
She brings the water.
She carries it up the stairs ahead of me in both hands, and at the top she stops outside our door the way a person stops outside a room they haven’t been in for a while. I put my hand flat between her shoulders and leave it there until she goes in.
She sets the glass on my nightstand, on the coaster that’s been sitting there empty for three weeks.
Her side of the bed hasn’t been touched since she left. Mine looks like a man’s been sleeping diagonally across all of it, which is accurate.
She takes one earring out and puts it in the dish on the dresser. That’s what gets me. Not the coat at the courthouse, not the folder in her lap at the federal building. A woman putting her earrings in a dish on my dresser because that’s where they live.
“Astrid.”
“Yes.”
“Can I ask you something I’ve been sitting on for a while?”
