Chapter 4
Richard's face got worse with every question.
But I just couldn't stop myself.
His jaw was clenched so tight.
"Stella, are you done?" he said.
I tilted my head at him and kept the smile exactly where it was.
"What's wrong?
"I'm talking this over with you seriously.
"If Mr. Stanton wants me settled somewhere good, I should know what I get to walk out with.
"Otherwise the story gets around and people start saying Mr. Stanton has no heart."
Richard's face went ice-cold.
Nothing landed on him harder than that.
He had never once thought of himself as a man without a heart.
He had protected me and spoiled me, hauled me out of a private room at midnight, brought in the best doctors in the city, and picked out flowers for the apartment himself.
In his eyes, that was more than enough.
It was enough, in his mind, to buy my good sense, my gratitude, and my quiet acceptance of his arrangements on the day he married somebody else.
He stared at me for a long moment before he forced a sentence out through his teeth.
"Don't say another word."
I smiled and let it go.
One more sentence and I would have said something neither of us could walk back.
I had never spoken to Richard that way before.
A man like him never needed to be fought.
Going along with him was enough to get everything he was willing to hand over.
I played along for seven years.
It took me until that night to see that nothing on the list of things he was willing to give had ever been what I wanted.
Richard threw the blanket back, got out of bed, and pulled his robe up off the floor.
He moved fast, with the cold that comes off a man holding down a fire.
I just sat there on the bed, watching him.
He paused at the door as though he meant to turn around.
But he never did.
The door shut, and the silence in the room went total.
I stayed where I was and slowly put my face in my hands.
Richard had it all worked out.
He should have looked a little closer.
I hadn't stayed in that bed waiting for an explanation.
I had stayed to hear it out of his own mouth.
That way, when I finally walked out, I wouldn't have to look back and invent excuses for him.
I sat there a long while before I got up and walked out of the bedroom barefoot.
The guest room door was closed.
It was completely silent inside.
Richard probably assumed I would cool off by morning, knock on that door the way I always had, and say I was sorry in the softest voice I owned.
He always believed I'd come back.
Because over these seven years, I'd gone back to him more times than I can count.
I stood outside that door for a moment, then turned and went back to the master bedroom.
Then I started packing up.
I left behind every piece of jewelry Richard ever gave me.
I didn't even bother with the clothes he'd bought me.
I even put the row of bottles on the vanity back exactly where they had been standing, one by one.
Last of all, I reached into the back of the drawer and took out a single stamp.
That stamp was Richard's favorite one.
Years back, in one of his rare good moods, he had opened the album for me. I lay across his knees, pointed at the page, and asked, "Is that the one worth the most?"
Richard nodded. "Yeah."
I teased him, "So, are you gonna give it to me?"
He looked down at me, and then he actually slid the stamp free and laid it in my palm.
"Take it," he said.