Page 93 of Don't Tell

"That's still not enough, Cade."

She opens the door and walks out.

The door closes behind her.

I stand in the foyer and don't move.

I watch the door, waiting for it to open, waiting for her to walk back in.

The wine bottle is on the table where she set it down. The bouquet of white flowers is beside it. The wrapping is still on the bouquet. The card is still tucked into the wrapping.

I stand there for ten minutes.

I sit down on the floor with my back against the wall. I look at the door, and I don't move.

The door does not open.

22.Suzanne

Day three at Renée's.

The guest room has a window over a small back garden. Chad has been watering the dahlias. The sheets smell like Renée's laundry detergent. There is a photograph on the bureau of Marguerite at thirty in a garden I have never seen, head tilted, laughing at something off-camera. Renée put it there on purpose.

I have been looking at it every morning.

I’m looking at it now.

I don’t cry.

I haven’t cried once since I walked out of the apartment. My chest is too big and too low for crying. It feels like the weather. I have tried to force the tears out — sit there until you do — but the tears don't come.

Downstairs, the coffee grinder is going.

I can hear Renée's voice underneath it, talking to Chad about something I’m not meant to overhear. Chad is saying yeah like how men agree when their wife is briefing them on the day's plan and it does not involve setting their cousin off.

I get up and go down.

Renée has made breakfast.

I don’t want it. She has made it anyway. There is toast. There is a small plate of cut fruit. There is a coffee in the mug she gave me for Christmas two years ago because she said I'd lose any mug she gave me that did not have my name on it. The mug has my name on it.

"Eat."

"I'm not hungry."

"Eat the toast."

"Renée."

"Half a piece."

I eat half a piece.

Chad is on the couch in the next room with a paperback open against his knee. He does not look over. He has been doing this since I came.

Renée sits down across from me with her own coffee.

"Suz."