47. Delilah
DELILAH
Easter Sunday, and the bakery is closed.
Guess what?
I’m here anyway.
I got in at six because I couldn’t sleep and there was nowhere else I wanted to be.
I ran the dishwasher with nothing in it.
I wiped down the front of the case with vinegar and newspaper, which is what my dad used on windows and what I still use even though it leaves my hands smelling like a chip shop.
I counted the till twice. My need to be busy got so desperate that I sorted the sprinkles jars by color.
I’d have moved onto scrubbing the grout with a toothbrush if the text hadn’t arrived.
KANE: I’m outside. I have the things I promised. If you’d rather I leave them with Josef, say the word and I’ll go.
I look at that message for a while.
The week has been quiet in a way I don’t know what to do with. No gifts. No envelopes on my desk. No screenshots of Connor losing yet another precious thing.
There were documents, too. Wednesday, a courier brought a thick envelope from a law office on Fifty-Third Street. I gave it to Skye without opening it. She called me back that afternoon and talked for fifteen minutes straight without stopping.
So I already know most of what’s in his hands. Technically speaking, I don’t need to speak with him directly.
I still text back.
ME: Come in.
I unlock the front and go back behind the counter, in my battle position.
He comes in with snow-melt on his shoulders. No overcoat this time. Black sweater, sleeves pushed to the elbows, no rings that I can see. He’s got a leather portfolio case under his arm. He stops six feet from the counter and stays there.
“Happy Easter,” he says.
“Likewise.”
That’s it for pleasantries. He sets the case on the counter, unzips it, and starts taking things out and laying them in a row, facing me. He talks as he works.
“Release of lien. Recorded Wednesday with the city register. That’s the stamped copy with the document number in the corner. Your building is not encumbered by anything of mine.”
He sets down the next.
“The guaranty. Canceled. Void retroactive to the day it was executed, with an acknowledgment written on the face of it that the guarantor never signed it and never consented to it.”
Next.
“Connor Boyd’s sworn statement. Notarized. He says the same thing in his own words—that he signed your name, that you didn’t know, that you never saw a dollar.”
Next.
“A permanent waiver from V Haven Holdings. It’s a release of any claim against the property, the equipment, the business, and the name, forever.”
Then he sets down something thicker. A bound stack, an inch and a half of it.
“These are waivers from every other company I control that could ever have claimed an interest in that lot. Ninety-one of them. They’re in numbered order and there’s an index on top.”
He sets down the title report last.
“Title report as of Friday. Owner of record, Delilah A. Dorsey. No liens. No options. No rights of first refusal. No recorded memoranda. Free and clear.”
I look at the row of documents on my own counter, on the same square of laminate where I once let him bully me into saying I’m not too much, and I have to swallow back the sudden onrush of emotion. I resent it. That he can still make me feel so much.
“Skye already read most of this,” I tell him.
“Good. That’s her job.”
“She said the affidavit’s an admission. She said a prosecutor could work with it.”
“She’s right.”
“She said you have to have known that.”
“I did. I do.”
I rest my palm on the stack of waivers, mostly to be doing something. The papers are cold from being outside.
“Why go to this length?” I ask. “The lien is gone. Why all of it?”
“Because I’m not asking you to trust me, Lilah.
Not one bit. You said your ability to trust is broken, so I removed it from the equation.
” He adjusts his stance. “Just so you know, I took Lot 22 out of the assembly. It isn’t part of the project anymore.
There’s no deal it’s holding up. Nobody has a reason to come here about it. ”
I frown. “That ends your project.”
“It does.”
“You spent twenty years on it.”
“A waste, as it turns out.”
“And you’re telling me this so I feel—what? Grateful?”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I’m simply telling you the truth. All of it.”
Then he reaches into the case one more time and takes out two pages, held together at the corner by a single staple. Even from here, I can see the burn mark on the letterhead and the brown stain in the margin.
It’s the original note, with the pledge folded once beneath it.
“Do you still want this?” he asks. “I know how you are with your record-keeping. Or should I burn it?”
I come around the counter for the first time. I take a spare sheet pan from under the register and set it on the café table by the window. Then I get the long matches stored with the birthday candles.
“Burn it,” I say. “Here. Where I can see it.”
He lays the note on the pan, and the pledge on top of it, and steps back. I strike the match. The flame wobbles in my shaky grip.
Slowly, uncertainly, I lower it down. The corner catches.
The document with my forged name browns, blackens, and disappears.
My signature—correction, not my signature, but the forgery, the pretty lie of it, the D with the wrong loop—curls in on itself and turns to nothing at all.
The blood stain on the corner burns with the rest.
The document that ruined my life is reduced to nothing but ash.
I stand there breathing bonfire and thinking of Connor at my kitchen sink, feeding pages into a fire and turning on the tap when he heard the door.
When it’s pure soot, I run the pan under the faucet. The whole thing goes to gray paste. I dump it in the trash and let the lid fall.
Kane hasn’t moved.
“Is there anything else?” I ask without turning to face him.
“No.”
“You sure? No envelope or last gift? Nothing you took off Connor this week? Is he missing a kidney now or something?”
“No,” he says again. “This is the end of it all.”
My throat is so clenched up that it aches. “Okay,” I say. “Goodbye, then.”
But I don’t hear him making any sounds of leaving.
I turn halfway in time to see Kane wrestling with something to say. His hands are fisted and his jaw is tight.
“It’s all there, you know,” he says at last. “There’s no catch or hidden traps.”
“Sure. Okay. I believe you.”
I do, funnily enough. This is one thing he wouldn’t lie about. Not like this, at least.
I look at the documents laid out on my counter and then at him standing there in a wet sweater with nothing in his hands. What comes out of my mouth surprises me.
“I still love you, you know. I was thinking about it while I was working today. So in the interest of full disclosure, I wanted you to hear that from me. I love you no matter how much I wish I didn’t.
” I stop to breathe. “But I don’t trust you.
And that’s not a thing you can hand me across a counter.
There’s no notary for it. You could bring me ninety-one more bound stacks and I’d still be standing here on pins and needles, waiting to find out what I don’t know yet. ”
“Lilah—”
“That’s not me punishing you. It’s just where I am.
” I swallow and keep going. “I sat in that chair by the window last Sunday and I couldn’t tell the difference between you and him and my sister and my mother.
After that, I stopped trusting my own judgment.
Until I get that back—if I ever do—I can’t do this. ”
He doesn’t argue. I would rather he did, but he doesn’t.
“Do you understand what I’m saying?” I ask.
“Yes. I do.”
“Alright. Then I’m done talking now, and I want you to leave, please.”
He looks at me. He doesn’t ask for a phone number he already has, or for later, or spring, or one more holiday.
“Happy Easter, Lilah” is all he says.
I nod formally. “Happy Easter, Kane.”
I stand behind the counter until his car pulls away.
There’s nothing stopping me from calling him back. That is the terrible thing about getting what I asked for. I could prevent it all, if I chose. I can open the door. I can tell him that I am frightened of my own empty house, and I want him to come make it feel less lonely.
He would stay.
I know that.
Just as surely as I know that him staying would not be enough to fix me.
So I square the papers against the counter, take them into the back, and store them in the safe.
Then I go back out front and sit on the stool behind the counter.
For months, I have pictured this morning. Easter Sunday. My bakery safe. I thought I would make something with lemons, open the good prosecco, maybe. Celebrate. Feel free.
Instead, I gaze at the patch of floor where he stood.
For once, nobody has taken the thing I love.
So why does it hurt so bad?