Chapter 2 - What Spilled Onto the Stone
I stayed kneeling because if I stood up my legs would give out.
The folder was still there in front of me, held up by the gloved hand. I could see the white letters leaning crooked across the leather. For Emma, When He Betrays You. The man behind it was out of focus, but I knew his breathing. I had slept next to that breathing for nine years. His mouth was open a little, like he had not planned for that folder to be in someone else's hand.
I didn't reach for it.
That was a choice. My hand hovered, then dropped back down to the open trash bag. The plastic edge was damp against my palm. Inside, my dresses were crushed into black folds. A sleeve hung out over the rim. I recognized the stitching before I recognized the dress. The navy one I had worn to the charity dinner in March. Somebody had just shoved it in.
The air smelled like cut grass and hot stone. My coat pulled tight across my shoulders when I leaned forward. I could hear one of the SUVs idling near the gate, low and steady.
"You don't take that," my husband said behind the folder. His voice was lower now, not angry the same way. Shocked, trying to get control back.
I didn't answer him. I put my hand into the bag and felt for what was softest. The scarf. The silk slid under my fingers, cool even in the daylight. Blue border, the pattern I knew with my eyes closed. My mother had tied it around my neck the morning of my law school graduation. It smelled faintly like her closet, like powder and cedar, even under the smell of plastic.
I pulled it out slowly. A corner of it caught on a zipper and I had to work it loose. My hands were shaking and I hated that he could see it.
Then I saw the photos.
They were spilling out from under the dresses, half stuck to the stone pavers. Four by six prints, the kind I kept in the wooden box on my dresser. Not on a phone. Real prints. One was face-down, the white back getting damp from the stone. One was me and him in the parking lot of a diner off Highway 27, his arm around my neck, both of us squinting into the sun. Another was my birthday on the back porch, three years ago. I was holding a cake and laughing with my mouth wide open.
They were not trash. They were the parts I had chosen to keep.
I picked up the diner one first. The edge was bent where the bag had folded over it. I smoothed it with my thumb without thinking. Stone dust stuck to the photo paper.
Something moved to my left. Boots on pavers. Two of the security men shifted, calm, not rushing. One stepped closer to the gate, the other moved to stand between me and the black SUV. They were not looking at me directly, but their path was clear. They were closing the way out and the way back to the car at the same time. Professional. Like they had been told where to stand before I ever knelt down.
My husband saw it too. He took a breath that lifted his whole chest.
"Emma." He said my name like it was a warning. "Leave the pavers. Now."
I kept the photo in my left hand and wrapped the scarf once around my right wrist. The silk caught on my dry skin. I could feel each pebble through the knees of my pants. The white pillar beside the steps threw a thin shadow across the bags.
I looked down again instead of at him. There was another photo half under a black heel. I reached for it with two fingers and pulled it free. It was my mom holding me as a baby on somebody's front porch. The colors had gone a little pink with age. I had kept it taped inside my closet door since college.
"You threw this away," I said. My voice came out quieter than I wanted. I didn't look up. "This was in my closet."
He didn't answer right away. I heard him shift his weight. Gravel crunched under his shoes.
"I told you," he said. "You need to get up and go."
The gloved hand with the folder had lowered a few inches. I could see my husband's face more clearly now past the leather edge. Short brown hair damp at the forehead. Dark shirt wrinkled at the collar. He kept glancing from the folder to me to the steps behind him, where I knew she was still standing even though I couldn't see her from down here.
I folded the diner photo in half, then stopped. I couldn't crease it. I slipped it instead inside the fold of the scarf and held both tight against my palm. The silk was the only warm thing I was touching.
One of the security men spoke low into his sleeve. Radio static, a word I didn't catch. The SUV by the gate rolled forward two feet and stopped. Its bumper lined up with the gate post, blocking the sidewalk view completely.
I stayed where I was. My knees ached against the stone. The open bag leaned against my leg.
May you like
"I'm not walking away without these," I said.
I didn't take the folder. Not yet. I held the scarf and the one photo and I did not move off the pavers.
