Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Corey walked into the hardware store to get more boxes.
He'd underestimated how much stuff was in the condo.
Even after two weeks of packing—of sorting, of deciding, of donating and discarding—there was more.
There was always more. He'd woken up that morning, made his coffee in a nearly empty kitchen, and realized he was going to run out of boxes by the end of the day.
So here he was, in the parking lot of Palmar Hardware and Feed grabbing a flatbed cart inside and heading for the packing supply aisle.
The store was quiet. A handful of early customers wandering the aisles. An older man in the paint section and a couple debating something in front of the light fixtures. Corey nodded at Kenny behind the counter and made his way toward the back.
He was checking prices on a stack of medium moving boxes when he heard his name.
"Corey."
He turned.
Miss Doris was at the end of the aisle, a small basket over her arm with a few items in it. She was wearing a knitted red cardigan and not a lock of her gray curls out of place. The expression she wore didn’t bode well for him.
"Miss Doris. Good morning."
"Good morning, dear." She walked toward him at her steady pace, and when she reached him she set her basket on the concrete floor between them. "Restocking?"
"Yeah. I'm moving. In a couple of weeks."
"Ah." She nodded like she wasn't surprised. "Where to?"
"A little cottage on Sandpiper Lane."
"Pet-friendly?"
He hesitated before replying. "Yes."
She held his eyes for a moment. There was something soft and knowing in her expression, but she didn't press.
"That's a nice street," she said instead. "Old oak trees. Very quiet at night. I have a friend who lived on that street for years. She always said it was the kind of place where you could hear the waves more than the traffic."
"I hope so."
"You'll do fine there, Corey."
Something in the way she said it caught him off-guard.
"Thank you," he managed.
Miss Doris picked up her basket. She started to move past him toward the checkout, and then she paused and turned back.
"You know," she said, almost casually, "the shelter has been very quiet this week."
Corey went still.
"Has it?" he said. His voice came out steadier than he expected.
"Very. I've been by twice. It's not usually so quiet."
He waited.
Miss Doris looked at him for a long moment. Then she reached out and patted his arm gently, once, the way she'd done at his front door the night his parents had been buried.
"Take care of yourself, dear," she said and continued on toward the front of the store.
Corey stood in the packing aisle for a while after she'd gone, one hand still resting on a stack of moving boxes, watching the door of the aisle where Miss Doris had disappeared.
He added more to the stack, made smalltalk with Kenny while checking out and headed back to the condo.
By eleven, he was elbow-deep in the hall closet, packing up an assortment of old winter coats when his phone buzzed.
He nearly ignored it. He'd been ignoring it a lot in the past week. He'd been getting through the days by moving in straight lines and not looking too far ahead or too far to the side.
But something made him pick it up this time. He had a message from Gayle.
Three words.
Can we talk?
He set the phone down on the counter and stepped back from it. His heart was beating so hard, it felt like it was coming out of his chest.
He walked into the living room, pacing the space between window and wall. He walked back to the kitchen and picked the phone back up.
The message was still there.
His first instinct was to tell her that it wasn’t a good idea. Not out of spite, but from a sense of self-preservation.
Then he thought about the boxes stacked around him. The house on Sandpiper Lane with the fenced yard and the hardwood floors. The realtor's papers he'd signed and the sign that was probably going up in front of the condo any day now.
He hadn't done any of it just for her. He'd done it for himself.
He'd been choosing his own future, one careful step at a time, for weeks now. And he wasn't going to stop now.
Saying no to her would be the safe thing. It would keep him from getting hurt again.
He looked at the message again. Can we talk?
Three words. She hadn't explained herself or asked for forgiveness or launched into a paragraph of justifications. She'd opened the door, barely. Just enough that he could see it was open.
He could walk through it, or he could walk away.
But he had to be the one to decide.
Yes. When?
His thumb hovered over the send button for a full ten seconds.
Then he sent it.
The dots appeared almost immediately on her end.
The park. The Christmas tree. Whenever you can get there.
He looked around at the boxes and the half-packed hall closet.
None of it was going anywhere.
Give me thirty minutes.
Corey set the phone down and went into the bathroom. He plashed cold water on his face and looked at himself in the mirror.
He didn't know what she was going to say.
He didn't know if there was anything she could say.
But he was going to hear her out.
He owed himself that much. He owed her that much.