The Other End of the Hall

Mrs. Hensley cries when she sees you.

She doesn't make a fuss about it. She's five feet tall, born in Aberdeen, and has run the Kingsley house on Louisburg Square for thirty years with the warmth of a drill sergeant. She just takes your coat at the door, looks at your face, and her eyes go wet, and she says, "Well. You'll be wanting tea," in a voice like gravel, and stomps off to the kitchen.

Lachlan watches her go.

"She hasn't spoken to me since the gala," he says. "She left my breakfast on the step outside my study. Like a cat."

"Good," you say, and climb the stairs.

The house is exactly the same. Narrow and tall, Federal brick, a curving staircase, five floors of polished wood and old money and silence. His bedroom is at the front of the second-floor hall, overlooking the square. Yours is at the very back, overlooking the garden wall. There are four closed doors between them. You counted them the first night you lived here, and you've never stopped counting.

Your room is exactly as you left it. The bed made. The book on the nightstand open to the page you were reading. Somebody, Mrs. Hensley, has put fresh white roses on the dresser.

You sit on the edge of the bed and put your face in your hands, just for a minute.

Then you get up and wash your face and go back downstairs, because Cordelia Lockwood is on her way.

He called her from the car. You heard every word, because he put it on speaker without asking you, and then, after a second, took it off speaker and said, "Sorry. Do you mind?" and you were so surprised you said no and he put it back on.

"Delia. The pendant you wore to the gala. Where did you get it?"

A pause on the line. Then her voice, warm and musical. "Lach, darling, what a strange question. Why?"

"Bring it to the house. Tonight."

Another pause. Longer. "Of course."

Now she sweeps into the front parlor in cream cashmere and pearls, her auburn hair glossy as a chestnut, carrying a small velvet box. She is genuinely, unfairly beautiful, the kind of woman people describe with words like luminous and effortless, and she knows exactly where the light falls in every room of this house because she's been walking through it since she was six.

"Ava." She kisses the air beside your cheek. "You poor thing. What a week you've had. Everyone's talking."

"I'm sure they are."

She turns to Lachlan, and her face softens into something private. "Here." She holds out the box. "I'm so sorry, I should have explained at the gala. Lach sent me to Thorncliffe's to collect it. He wanted it cleaned for your anniversary. A surprise." She gives you a rueful little smile. "I only put it on so it wouldn't get lost in my bag. Silly of me. I suppose it looked dreadful."

It's good. It's very, very good. For a second, even you almost believe it. You look at Lachlan, and your heart is in your throat, because if he says yes, if he goes along with it, you'll know everything you need to know about the next twenty-seven days.

Lachlan takes the box. Opens it. The Vesterberg Star lies on black velvet, blue as deep water.

"I didn't send you to Thorncliffe's, Delia," he says.

Cordelia's smile doesn't move. "Lach..."

"I didn't know it existed until this morning." His voice is very calm. Calm is the most frightening thing about Lachlan Kingsley. "I don't know why you'd say I did."

The silence stretches. Cordelia's green eyes go bright and wet, beautifully, all at once.

"I was trying to help," she whispers. "Mr. Thorncliffe said it belonged to the Kingsley account and I thought... I'm always trying to help you, and you never..." She presses a hand to her mouth, turns, and walks out. The front door closes softly behind her. She doesn't slam it. Cordelia would never slam a door. It might leave a mark.

Lachlan stands there holding the open box.

Then he crosses the room and holds it out to you, and when you take it, his fingers brush yours. It's the first time he's touched your skin in weeks. Maybe months. You both feel it. You both pretend you didn't.

"I'm sorry," he says.

You close the box. "For what, exactly?"

He opens his mouth. Shuts it. "I'm working on the list," he says finally.

You fasten the pendant around your neck in front of your bedroom mirror at midnight. Your fingers shake on the clasp. The sapphire settles into the hollow of your throat, warm already, like it never left.

Your bad decision, Mama, you think. And now it's mine.

There's a knock on your door.

You freeze. Nobody knocks on this door. In three years, nobody has knocked on this door except Mrs. Hensley with laundry.

"It's me," Lachlan says from the other side.

You open it.

He's standing in the hall in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open, no tie, no jacket. You've seen him like this maybe five times. His hair is a mess. He has a glass of water in his hand that he seems to have forgotten about. He looks past you into your room, at the narrow bed and the white roses and the books stacked on the windowsill, like he's seeing a country he's only ever read about.

"I've never been down here," he says.

"I know."

His eyes come back to you. They go to the sapphire at your throat and stay there.

"Why didn't you tell me?" His voice is low. "That it was hers. That you'd lost it. That Delia was wearing it. You sat through that whole gala..."

"And said what?" You lean against the doorframe. "Lachlan, the woman you'd rather talk to than me is wearing my dead mother's necklace? You'd have assumed I was planning to pawn it."

He flinches. He actually flinches.

"That's not..."

"Isn't it?" Your voice cracks, just slightly. "You've thought I was a gold digger since the day you met me. You never said it. You didn't have to. It was in every room."

He doesn't deny it.

That's the part that breaks something in you. He stands in your doorway, the first time in three years, and he doesn't deny it.

"Good night, Lachlan," you say, and close the door in his face.

You hear him stand there for a long time. Then his footsteps, slow, going back up the hall. Four doors. You count them.

At three a.m. you give up on sleep and go downstairs for water.

The house is dark except for a sliver of lamplight under the door of his study. You hesitate. You shouldn't. You push it open anyway.

He's asleep at his desk, slumped in his chair with his head on his folded arms and a spreadsheet glowing on the monitor. Halifax. Of course. His shirt has come open another button. His face is turned toward you, and in sleep it's younger, softer, the hard lines gone, his lashes dark against his cheekbones. He looks like someone you could have loved without being afraid.

You step closer to turn off the lamp.

And then you see it.

A fine platinum chain around his neck, disappearing under his collar. The weight at the end of it has slipped free and lies against his chest, catching the lamplight.

Your wedding ring.

The one you left on his glass. He's wearing it over his heart.