Page 46 of Her Rival

Two nights after the Sabers game, she drove up to the house at ten thirty-seven.

I knew the time because I'd been watching the clock since she'd hung up at nine fifty-one, sitting at the kitchen island in the same spot I'd been in twenty-four hours before when she'd been across from me. I'd spent forty-six minutes trying very hard not to do the math on how long the drive from Brynn's penthouse to my place took on a Friday night, and the number arrived anyway, somewhere in the back of my head, and at ten thirty-four I stood up and walked to the front door and turned on the porch light and the path lights and the lights in the driveway and the entryway and one floor lamp in the living room. Then I walked back to the island and sat down.

She'd asked if she could come over. She hadn't said why. Her voice had been steady on the phone in a way that meant it was not steady, and I hadn't asked any questions, because I knew the difference between come over and come over with a question I want to ask in person. This was the second one.

The crunch of tires on gravel came up the driveway.

I did not get up.

I'd decided, in those forty-six minutes, that I was going to let her come to me. Let her get out of the car on her own. Let her walk up to my door on her own. Let her ring my bell or open it herself, whichever she chose. I was going to be in this house in a way that did not require her to perform being okay when she walked through the door.

The engine cut off.

I waited.

I heard the SUV door open and close. Heard her footsteps on the gravel, heels, slower than they normally were, the small uneven sound of a woman who'd walked from a car to a door any number of times in her life and was tonight walking it in a way I had not yet heard her walk anywhere. I heard her reach the front step. Heard the small pause that meant she was deciding whether to knock or open it herself, and the small click that meant she'd decided to open it herself, which I'd left unlocked when I turned all the lights on. The way you leave a door unlocked when you've told a person yes and you've meant it.

She came in. The door closed behind her.

I did not stand up.

She stood in the entryway. I could see her from the island, the long sightline of the open plan I'd spent too much money on cutting through the living room to where she was, framed against the dark of the open door behind her like a photograph somebody took without asking. She still had her coat on. She was holding her laptop bag against her chest with both arms.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi."

"I'm sorry it's late."

"It's not late."

"It is late."

"It's late for the world, Hartley. It's not late for here. You can come in."

She didn't move.

Then she did. She walked across the long living room to the island, the same steady steps with the same small unevenness, and set the laptop bag on the counter, and set down her keys, and set down her phone, and stood across from me in her coat with her hand flat on top of the bag, the way a person stands across from someone when they're about to put a thing on the table they haven't yet figured out how to put on the table.

I stayed where I was.

I didn't ask her what was wrong, and I didn't stand up to take her coat. Standing up and taking a coat would've been a performance of normal. We are doing a normal thing, I am being a normal host, please consider me kind. The moment in the kitchen didn't have room for any of that. So I stayed at the island and waited.

She looked at the bag under her hand.

She unzipped the side pocket.

She pulled out an envelope.

She set it on the counter and slid it across to me with two fingers, the way I'd seen a hundred women slide a hundred things across a hundred surfaces, slowly, like the moving of the object was the only thing they could manage in that minute. I looked at the envelope and did not pick it up.

"Open it," she said.

"You sure."

"Open it."

I picked it up. Opened it. A photograph slid into my palm.