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The Forbidden Center

Page 165

by A.J. Kingsley

“Yes.”

Nothing after it. I let it go, and she watches me let it go.

“Problem?”

“Whose idea was this?”

“Which part?”

“Any of it.”

“Ruth asked me where they should go. I told her.”

“You reorganized my kitchen.”

“I answered a question.”

I take a glass down. The shelf is lower than I want it to be, which is the point, and I’m not going to say so.

“What else.”

“I am not going to tell you.”

“Astrid.”

“You will find them.”

So I start singing. I don’t know all the words and that has never stopped me.

“Do not.”

“You started it.”

“I answered a question about a cupboard.”

I get louder. Somewhere around the part I definitely do not know, she comes across the kitchen and puts her hand over my mouth.

I keep going into her palm.

“Stop.”

I don’t.

Her hand presses harder and I can feel her laughing through it, and she tells me something in Swedish that I’m confident is not a compliment, and she takes her hand back and I catch her wrist.

Left hand.

The fingers go around it and don’t close.

I don’t look. I get the other hand on her instead and she’s still pulling away and she isn’t pulling very hard, and then she stops pulling at all.

She lands against my chest with her forehead against my sternum.

She’s still laughing. Neither of us says anything.

The glass is in my hand. The water never happened.

“Do not say anything about the money.”