Page 58 of A Thousand Little Goodbyes

She loved them both, she really did. And the right thing to do in this situation was to keep moving across the wire until all three of them were carried to safety. But the words on her stupid list kept flashing in her mind.

“I don’t have to explain myself to anyone,” she said aloud.

One of Walsh’s brows rose. “What’s that?”

“Nothing.” Then, more forcefully. “Nothing.And I’m glad you kept that photo. In fact, I hope you have a secret copy of it stashed somewhere. I hope it haunts your dreams and keeps you lying awake long into the night.”

“I…um…” On the screen, Walsh became a blur of movement. Footsteps pattered, a door closed shut, and he returned to stillness once again. The smile that had been on his face was now replaced by concern. “Have you and Scarlett been drinking? Are you somewhere safe? Are you close enough to your hotel to walk back?”

Chrissie laughed. She didn’t know what strange magic about this man allowed her to laugh when her life was falling apart, but she wasn’t about to question it. Not when the magic was weaving its spell tighter around her. “The only thing I’ve had to drink today is tea, although the first batch may have been laced with turpentine. Does that mean you haven’t deleted the picture?”

The concern in his face transformed to what looked suspiciously like chagrin. “Am I allowed to plead the Fifth?”

A warm, liquid sensation replaced all of Chrissie’s other emotions. All of a sudden, she wasn’t standing next to a garbage-scented alleyway with the rumbling of the El one block over. She wasn’t wearing yesterday’s jeans and her favorite rainbow Crocs, her beautiful haircut now back to its regularly scheduled bundle on top of her head. Shewas just a woman talking to a man she liked, and who she was pretty sure liked her back.

“Good for you,” she said. “I mean,shameon you, obviously, but I’m glad you kept it. If you want, I’ll send you a few more to round out your collection.”

“I…” On the screen, Walsh glanced nervously around before dropping his voice. Based on the glimpses of background she could see—dark blue wallpaper and a bookcase filled with wartime thrillers, the edge of a neatly made bed with a paisley quilt over the top—she was pretty sure he was in his bedroom. “Chrissie, are you sure you’re not drunk? Or being held at gunpoint? Blink once for yes and twice for no.”

Her laugh came a little less confidently this time. “Should I stop? Is this not okay?”

“Yes! I mean—no.” He cleared his throat and fell to the bed. On one corner of the screen, Chrissie could just make out a patch of fake green grass. It was Rufio’s pee carpet.In Walsh’s bedroom.Any chance Chrissie had of making it out of this call with her whole heart disappeared in a flash.

“It’s…amazing, actually,” he said, his voice low. “You know how I feel about you—about you and Kat both.”

Chrissie nodded, her throat too tight to allow words to escape.

“But this is the first time you’ve givenanyindication that you’re willing to try this thing between us. That you want it, even. I might need a minute.”

The tightness in her throat moved to her chest, where it remained. Walsh’s kind and careful response—taking into account not just the two of them, but their two children—was as far from romance as possible. This was the point where passion was supposed to take the place of reason, when they stopped talking and thinking and planning and just, you know,didthe thing.

But even in her youth, Chrissie had never been that girl. Where others acted, she stood back and watched. When they gave in, she smiled tightly and prepared to clean up the mess that was left behind.

Walsh Hampton, she was starting to realize, was very much the same. And instead of balking at the curveball she’d just tossed him, he’d caught it and was holding it patiently until he was ready to throw it back.

“Kat was right, you know,” Chrissie said when Walsh’s silence extended longer than evenshecould stand. “How much of our call did you overhear?”

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “I was outside mowing the lawn when it happened. I only got the story secondhand from Lily. Was it as bad as she made it out to be?”

Chrissie thought about the venom that had been in Kat’s voice, the way all of her hatred had been angled directly at her head, and winced.

“Yeah, it was pretty brutal. But I don’t think it would’ve bothered me nearly as much if there hadn’t been an element of truth to what she said. Her world is small.Myworld is small. There are all of three adults in her life she can count on—me, you, and Scarlett—and I’m threatening her relationship with one of them. Of course she’s worried.”

“She has no need to be.” Walsh’s smile was so full of warmth and understanding that she felt her breath catch. “You could tear my heart out of my chest and eat it with your bare hands, and I’d still want to be in Kat’s life. But that’s not what this stuff between the two of you is really about, is it?”

Chrissie shook her head. She thought about sagging to the sidewalk and letting it absorb her weight, but the scattered cigarette butts and a greasy patch of unidentifiable goo stopped her.

So did Walsh’s next words.

“Tell me about him. Her dad, I mean.”

It was the first time anyone had asked her that question since Kat was a newborn. The hospital had wanted to know so they could fill outthe birth certificate, but few people beyond those bureaucratic walls were interested in more. Or theywereinterested but too polite to ask. There was something about very young, very inexperienced mothers that made people shy away from pushing too hard. They knew, as almost everyone did, that the story wasn’t one that painted the main characters in a good light.

“His name is Grimshaw Pemberly.”

“No way. You’re making that up.”

Chrissie’s laugh bubbled up and escaped so quickly that it could have been a sob. “That’s what everyone says when they hear his name for the first time, but believe me when I say it suits him. He’s an English lit professor somewhere down in California. I want to say Berkeley, but he tends to move around a lot.”