He moved through his own house with an efficiency that had never needed to impress anyone.From where I sat in the living room, I could see down the hallway and through the bedroom door he’d left open.I watched him pull a folded flannel shirt and a pair of sweatpants from a drawer and carry them to the bathroom without looking at me once.That avoidance felt like a courtesy I had never known before.He set the clothes on the counter, came back out, and went straight to the kitchen.He said nothing.No explanation.The clothes were simply there.
The sound of the refrigerator door opening pulled me from the front room.I walked to the kitchen threshold and stopped, unable to bring myself to cross it.
The rice went into the pan.He turned a burner on low and stirred it once without flourish.He tore bread from a loaf in the bread box beside the toaster -- not cut, just torn, a rough piece the size of his hand -- and set it on a plate.The plate was plain white.Not the kind of china anyone had ever flown to New York to select.He slid the rice onto it from the pan, set a glass of water beside it, and placed both on the table.Then he stopped.Leaning against the counter with his arms crossed, he looked at me.I stood in the doorway, wearing borrowed clothes, staring at the plate waiting on the kitchen table.
“Nobody’s going to take it back,” he said.Low.Even.“Eat.”
Then he turned.He moved to the window above the sink and stood facing it, his back to the room.
I sat down.
The chair scraped against the hardwood and neither of us commented on it.I picked up the fork -- plain, slightly bent at the tine, lived-in -- and ate.The rice was warm and tasted of nothing much.At some point in the last six weeks my body had gone onto a budget that had very little to do with hunger.It wasn’t the first meal I’d been fed since Rogue had found me, but I felt ravenous and ate it all.I tore the bread and ate that too.I drank half the water without putting the glass down.
He didn’t turn around.
The window he was looking at gave onto the backyard and the tree line beyond.He didn’t turn around while I ate.The refrigerator hummed its steady note.
When I was done, I set the fork across the plate.
He heard it.
He came toward me, and I resisted the urge to brace for it.He picked up the plate and set it in the sink and ran water over it, and then he came back and stood beside the table.
He pulled out a chair and sat on the far side with his forearms flat on the surface.
He didn’t ask me a question.
He stayed still across from me.
I hadn’t planned this part.I’d planned the run, but I hadn’t planned this far.
“There was an engagement.”The word tasted rehearsed, and the second I heard it in my own voice I hated it.“Eighteen months ago.My family -- my father --
“I went to the parties.I wore the ring.I sat through the showers.There was a -- there was a magazine that did an engagement piece.My mother liked the photographs.”My fingers worried the hem of the borrowed T-shirt in my lap.I made them stop.“I didn’t -- I didn’t know how to say no to any of it.I don’t know if that makes sense.”
Part of me expected reassurance.None came.
“And then yesterday --” I stopped.
He didn’t rush to fill the gap.The coffeepot ticked on the warming plate.
“Who arranged it?”
Three words.Flat.The question went under all the practiced edges of what I’d been telling him and took the bottom out of it.
“My father is a greedy man.It all started with him wanting zoning exceptions, but I know him too well.It wouldn’t have ended there.The family I was to marry into had political connections.Tennessee, Kentucky, the Southeast.My father didn’t have any of that.He had me.”
His expression stayed unreadable.
“Millions of dollars.”The number sat sour on my tongue.“Three pieces.The last one was supposed to close after the wedding.The dress came out of the second payment.I heard them arguing about it once in the study.My mother wanted the dress included in the wedding budget.My father told her the wedding budget was the wedding, and the dress was part of the deal.He wasn’t wasting real money on it.”
The words hung in the kitchen between us.Hearing them out loud stripped away the last thin layer of pretending.
I pressed my lips together and lowered my gaze to the scarred wood of the table.“I was the deal.”
Seconds dragged across the kitchen.I made myself look back up at him.
“I ran before the ceremony,” I said.“There’s a service hall in the back of the venue.I grabbed my bag and went out through the kitchen.”