Chương 6
Gwen looked at her hands.
“My own attorney costs money.”
“We have money.”
“Do we?”
“I do.”
“That is not the same sentence.”
He began to say it was. Then he stopped.
“My checking account has about thirty-two thousand,” he said. “The shop has operating cash, but that isn’t personal money. The settlement may happen, but it may not. I can pay the initial legal bill.”
“And then?”
“We figure it out.”
She rubbed the pale mark where her wedding ring had been.
“Where is it?” Gavin asked.
Gwen’s hand closed.
“Paige took it.”
His breathing changed.
“She said the stone could scratch me during treatment. Your mother said they would put it in the safe.”
“Did you ask for it back?”
“Yes.”
“What did they say?”
“That I lose things.”
Gavin stood and walked to the sink. He filled a paper cup, poured it out, and filled it again.
Behind him Gwen said, “This is the part where you want to break something.”
“I’m not going to.”
“That isn’t the same as not wanting to.”
“No.”
He drank the water.
“She was filming you,” he said.
“She’s been filming for weeks.”
“Why?”
“Sometimes to show you I was unstable. Sometimes because she thought I looked funny. Once because I fell asleep at the table.”
“Did she send them to me?”
“I don’t know.”
Gavin thought of the videos Paige had sent during his contract. Gwen mumbling while wrapped in a blanket. Gwen dropping a spoon. Gwen standing in the pantry, staring at shelves as if she had forgotten why she was there. Paige added laughing emojis and captions about chemo brain without ever using the word chemotherapy. Gavin had assumed Gwen was exhausted from stress.
He had replied with a thumbs-up to one of them.
His stomach turned.
“I saw some,” he said.
Gwen looked at him.
“I didn’t understand.”
“Did you ask me?”
“No.”
She nodded once.
He wanted her to shout. Her restraint was harder to bear.
By afternoon, Gwen had chosen Marcus’s apartment over a hotel. Denise arranged for a home-health assessment and helped Gwen contact a patient navigator at the cancer clinic. She also documented Gwen’s report of financial coercion and unwanted shaving. She explained that different agencies might become involved, but none would solve the situation quickly.
“They may ask the same questions more than once,” Denise said. “You can say you need a break. You can also choose not to make a report today.”
Gwen looked at Gavin.
He kept his face still.
“I want it documented,” she said. “I don’t know what else I want yet.”
Denise nodded. “That is enough for today.”
Gavin spent the next morning cleaning Marcus’s apartment. The refrigerator did, in fact, make a judgmental noise, a low groan whenever the compressor shut off. He scrubbed the bathroom twice, changed the air filter, and carried three boxes of dental-office holiday decorations into storage. Marcus fixed the water heater by striking a valve with the handle of a screwdriver, then denied doing so.
They bought new sheets, towels, and a small folding chair for the shower. Gavin added blackout curtains because Gwen had become sensitive to light. He put the sour peach rings in a kitchen drawer.
When Gwen was discharged two days later, she paused on the apartment threshold.
The place was modest, with beige carpet and windows overlooking a pharmacy parking lot. A dentist-shaped sign creaked outside when the wind moved. Someone had left a potted plant on the windowsill. It was mostly brown.
“We can get rid of that,” Gavin said.
Gwen touched one curled leaf. “It’s trying.”
“It’s losing.”
“So are we.”
He waited.
She looked at him. “That was a joke.”
“Not a good one.”
“I’ve been sick.”
He carried her bag inside.
For three days, they did almost nothing connected to the property dispute. Gwen slept, attended a clinic appointment, and learned how to flush her port dressing with help from a nurse. Gavin cooked food she could not tolerate and then ate it himself over the sink. Marcus left containers of soup outside the door and texted before entering.
At night Gavin woke whenever Gwen moved. On the fourth night she found him sitting on the bedroom floor with his back against the wall.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“You’ve been doing nothing loudly.”
He looked toward the window.
She pulled the blanket higher. “Come to bed.”
“I’ll wake you.”
“You already did.”
He climbed in beside her but stayed on top of the covers.
After a while she said, “You can touch me.”
He put one hand on her shoulder.
“Not like I’m a bomb.”
He moved closer. She rested her head against his chest. The bandage beneath her arm pressed against him through the thin cotton of her shirt.
“I should have come home,” he said.
“You didn’t know.”
“I knew something.”
“You knew I sounded tired.”
“I knew you stopped arguing.”
Gwen was quiet.
“You always argue,” he continued. “About the truck. About invoices. About whether cereal is dinner.”
“It isn’t.”
“I knew something was wrong.”
“You also knew the Braddock contract was the only reason the shop could keep six people employed.”
“I could have found someone else.”
“You tried.”
“I could have closed for a while.”
“You would have hated me.”
“No.”
“You would have said you didn’t. Then every late bill would have sat between us.”
Gavin stared into the dark.
She knew him well enough to be cruel accurately.
“I still should have known,” he said.
“Yes.”
The answer hurt, but it also steadied him. She had not absolved him. She had not abandoned him either.
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The next morning Tessa Boone met them at the apartment. She was a business attorney in her fifties with silver hair cut close to her head and reading glasses attached to a red cord. She brought no assistant and accepted Marcus’s bad coffee without complaint.
Gwen wore a soft blue scarf over her scalp. Gavin had offered to help tie it, but she learned from a video and did it herself.
