Chương 10
Thomas looked at her.
Margaret continued.
“I loved him before he disappeared. I don’t know exactly what I feel now. I don’t think that should affect what happens here.”
She returned to her seat.
Outside, Hannah said, “That was brutal.”
Margaret adjusted the strap of her old brown shoulder bag.
“It was accurate.”
“That’s what made it brutal.”
Thomas received a prison sentence.
Not forever.
Long enough.
Margaret visited him once during the first month.
The visiting room smelled of disinfectant and vending-machine coffee.
Thomas sat across from her.
“You cut your hair,” he said.
“Two inches.”
“Looks nice.”
“You always hated it short.”
“I didn’t hate it.”
“You complained for thirty years.”
“I had preferences.”
“You were annoying.”
He smiled.
Margaret did too.
That frightened her.
She did not want tenderness to become forgiveness by accident.
Thomas asked about Hannah.
“She’ll contact you when she wants to.”
“Okay.”
“And don’t send her letters every week.”
“I’ve sent two.”
“In eight days.”
He looked embarrassed.
“I have time.”
“She has a life.”
He nodded.
Margaret bought coffee from the machine.
It was worse than the Beaumont’s.
She sat again.
Thomas watched her.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“You’re staring.”
“I missed watching you complain about coffee.”
Margaret looked at the cup.
“That is an extremely manipulative thing to say.”
“I know.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Thomas corrected himself.
“Sorry.”
“Better.”
They sat quietly.
After a while Thomas asked, “Do you still have my tools?”
“Some.”
“What happened to the socket set?”
“Gary borrowed it.”
Thomas frowned.
“Gary loses tools.”
“You’ve been legally dead for five years and that’s what bothers you?”
“It was a good socket set.”
Margaret laughed.
Thomas laughed too.
Then both stopped.
The ordinary sound of being married had returned for three seconds.
Neither knew what to do with it.
Margaret looked through the reinforced window toward the parking lot.
“I’m not waiting for you.”
Thomas was quiet.
“I know.”
“I mean it.”
“I know.”
“If I visit, it doesn’t mean we’re getting back together.”
“I understand.”
“If Hannah talks to you, that doesn’t mean she forgives you.”
“I understand.”
Margaret turned.
“And stop agreeing with everything I say. You never did that before.”
Thomas smiled.
“There she is.”
Margaret’s face hardened.
“Don’t.”
The smile disappeared.
“Sorry.”
She finished her coffee.
Before leaving, she took off her wedding ring.
Thomas watched.
Margaret placed it on the table between them.
Not giving it to him.
Just setting it down.
“I wore this for forty-two years.”
Thomas stared at it.
“I know.”
“Thirty-seven while you were actually my husband.”
His eyes lowered.
Margaret picked the ring up again and put it in her pocket.
“I don’t know what to do with it yet.”
“You don’t have to decide.”
“No.”
She stood.
“That’s one thing I’ve learned.”
She walked away.
Hannah took longer.
Six months passed before she agreed to speak to Thomas by phone.
Margaret did not ask what they discussed.
That restraint cost her more than Hannah knew.
When Hannah eventually mentioned it, they were in Margaret’s kitchen making sandwiches for Eli.
“He apologized,” Hannah said.
Margaret spread mustard across bread.
“Good.”
“He didn’t ask me to forgive him.”
“Also good.”
“He told me I was right about Northstar.”
Margaret looked at her daughter.
Hannah smiled faintly.
“I enjoyed that more than I should have.”
“No, you enjoyed it exactly as much as you should have.”
Eli ran into the kitchen carrying a plastic dinosaur.
“Grandma, he’s hungry.”
Margaret looked at the dinosaur.
“What does he eat?”
“People.”
“Absolutely not in my kitchen.”
“Grandpa says dinosaurs eat meat.”
Margaret froze.
Hannah froze too.
Eli continued playing.
Margaret looked at her daughter.
“You showed him?”
“A picture.”
Margaret waited.
Hannah put down the knife.
“I don’t want Dad erased.”
“I didn’t say you should.”
“I know.”
Margaret nodded.
Eli made the dinosaur bite a napkin.
Life moved.
That was the strange part.
Scandal did not suspend garbage collection.
Court hearings did not stop children from needing lunch.
Thomas being alive did not restore the five years he had been dead.
Margaret still had dentist appointments.
She still forgot passwords.
Gary still borrowed tools.
Emily Carter sent a Christmas card from the Beaumont Hotel with a handwritten note:
No mysterious envelopes this year, please.
Margaret laughed so hard she called her.
They spoke for nearly an hour.
Daniel Cross wrote once.
His letter contained no request for forgiveness.
He said he had closed his private security business and accepted an investigative job with a compliance firm.
Margaret did not know whether that represented redemption or simply employment.
She wrote back two sentences.
I hope you do better with the next frightened person who asks for help.
And if you ever grab something out of my hand again, I’ll finish the job.
Daniel replied with a single line.
Understood.
Margaret kept that letter.
She did not know why.
A year after the hotel, she returned to Washington.
Not for Thomas.
Her sister-in-law had finally rescheduled the retirement celebration that the original disaster had ruined.
Margaret stayed at the Beaumont again.
Hannah called it morbid.
Margaret called it a hotel with comfortable mattresses.
Emily was still night manager.
Her hair was still annoyingly neat.
When Margaret approached the desk, Emily looked up.
For a second neither spoke.
Then Emily said, “Please tell me you’re not carrying an envelope.”
Margaret placed both hands on the counter.
“No envelope.”
“Brass keys?”
“No.”
“Mysterious men?”
“Not unless you count the cab driver.”
Emily smiled.
“How are you?”
Margaret considered the question.
People had asked it constantly for a year.
Usually she said fine.
Sometimes complicated.
Once, after too much wine, she had told her sister, Depends which husband you mean—the dead one, the criminal one, or the idiot I married in 1979?
Tonight she said, “Better.”
Emily nodded.
That was enough.
Margaret checked into Room 512.
She had specifically requested anything except the third floor.
May you like
Not because she was frightened.
She simply did not need to prove anything.
