I would have done this for the library. For me.” For Sutton.
“Are you going to chain yourself to the front doors?”
That makes me laugh a little. “I don’t have a death wish. Not anymore.”
He absorbs that for a moment. “Sutton isn’t here.”
“I can see that.” His hair would glint like spun gold in this light. His blue eyes would dance with a thousand things to say. His absence is as loud as a shotgun. “He’s at the office?”
“Not likely. He quit after you left.”
It’s like falling two hundred feet and landing backward in the water. Like having the breath knocked out of me. “What?”
“He didn’t send me his itinerary, but I figured he would be in LA by now.”
“No,” I whisper, because that means I’m too late.
“He can’t exactly pull his money out. Can’t close the barn doors after the horses have been let out, was the way he put it. But he can resign his position. That was him choosing you over money, in case the grand gesture wasn’t clear.”
There’s no air at all in my lungs. No air in the warm morning mist. I’m left to sink and sink, unable to breathe. Unable to think. Sutton did that for me. He left everything—for me.
The grand gesture I always wanted from Christopher… Another man gave it to me. It makes me wonder how much of the world I’ve been ignoring in my tunnel vision. How much of life I’ve been hiding from in pursuit of a man who doesn’t want me as much as I wanted him.
Suddenly I can’t stand to wait a second longer. Whatever threads of love I felt for Christopher Bardot, they fall to the concrete outside the broken library. Gone.
It doesn’t feel like a loss. It feels like being free.
Is Sutton in LA, knocking on my mom’s condo right now?
Except she would have called me. And he would have had time to arrive if he followed me quickly. Maybe he hadn’t come for me, no matter that Christopher thought he would. He might have left for good, the way a sad little boy tried to do with a wild horse a long time ago. There would be no water’s edge to stop him this time.
Christopher studies the painting through his sunglasses. “Cleopatra?”
There’s a hardness to his jaw like it pains him to speak, and as much as I’ve fought him, I can spare him that. This painting won’t be enough to save the library. Nothing will.
“She knows what’s coming,” I say, softly so no one else hears.
He huffs a laugh. “As it turns out, Sutton was right. You do have the skills of diplomacy we need. You can convince people to do anything. Unfortunately you convinced them to hate us.”
I look away and manage a small smile. “And it turns out you were right. It doesn’t matter whether they hate you. You have the deed and a wrecking ball.”
“It didn’t have to be like this,” Christopher says, his jaw tight. There’s a muscle that works. A slight flare of his nostrils. The slightest signs that he’s upset. He had those same signs the day the will was signed, but he would not be swayed then. Not now, either.
Strange, the way I can admire his resolve even as it tears us apart. “It was always like this.”
“You can probably make them riot,” he remarks, his voice even. “An angry mob.”
“To break the windows in? To steal the books? A little counter to the purpose.” Besides the breakfast tacos were too delicious. No one could be in a rage after eating breakfast tacos.
“Or they could form a human chain around the building. It would delay construction, if nothing else.”
“And cost you money,” I say, gentle now. “If nothing else.”
“There’s that.”
“I’m not going to do that. I made my point.”
“Which is what?” He looks genuinely lost. It isn’t part of advanced economics theory, what’s happening in the streets tonight. It’s community. History. These are things he doesn’t understand.
“The protest isn’t to stop you. It isn’t even about you, not really. Protest are a voice for people who have been told not to be quiet. It’s the only way we can speak.”
I’m not so different from Mrs. Rosemont. We protest in different ways, through the historical society and connections to city hall. Through a painting and somewhat less lofty friends I’ve made in Tanglewood. Both of us overruled by bribery.
Money has the loudest voice of all.
He finally takes off his sunglasses, revealing eyes that are dark from lack of