The Stolen - Jason Pinter [35]
She looked at him. He was wearing a wedding ring. It
was polished and it gleamed something pretty.
He stood up. Motioned for her to do the same. The girl
stood up reluctantly, then smelled the aroma of pancakes
coming from somewhere. Her favorite.
"Strawberry and chocolate chip. Fresh off the griddle,"
he said, smiling. "Let's get you fed, you can meet your
new mommy and new brother, and then I'll show you to
your room."
She took the man's hand, his grip gentle, and followed
him out of the darkness.
11
It would have been easy to say no. For years she'd grown
accustomed to disappointments, to a life that never quite
went the way she planned.
The wound still hurt terribly. Doing this could rub salt
in deep. And who knows? Another few weeks, few
months, and the pain might have begun to die down. And
given a few years, she might have never thought about him
again. Things would have gone back to the way they were
before the day they met.
None of that mattered, though, because when Henry
called, for the first time in months his voice coming over
the phone, she agreed to meet him almost immediately.
Just a few years ago, Amanda had nothing, no friends,
nobody to trust but herself. Her life had been a series of halfhearted relationships, embarked upon mainly because that's
what she assumed was normal. That's what she was used
to. Men who were more interested in their own success than
how it could be used to make others happy. She'd grown
weary of that scene, and at some point, like many other girls
her age, Amanda Davies had simply given up.
The irony was when she'd met Henry, the very first
thing he did was lie right to her face. Looking back, she
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knew he'd done it to save his own life without implicating her. And while back then she contemplated literally
ditching him on the side of the road, she could look back
at his brazen behavior fondly.
He'd tricked her into giving him a ride out of town
when he was mistakenly wanted for murder. In the end
Henry was able to clear his name, yet there was a moment,
that moment when he'd come clean, admitting his lie,
when she could have left him on the side of the road to die.
But in that moment Amanda was able to look into Henry
Parker's eyes and tell one thing. This was more real than
anyone she'd ever known.
Henry's eyes gave away everything. The year they knew
each other, he could never hide anything. She could read
his language--words and body--like nobody else. And he
offered himself in a way that was both selfless and confident, and utterly consuming.
That's why when he ended their relationship, it wasn't
simply another thing to forget. Being with him was the first
time Amanda felt a future. She couldn't be the only one
who thought that way, though, so when he decided to end
it, for her own sake in his words, she didn't fight. She
didn't want to be another one of those sad girls, trying to
convince a guy to stay.
If she was meant to be happy, she would be. If not,
that was life.
So when Henry called her out of the blue, after radio
silence for nearly six months, the easy thing to do would
have been to hang up. To tell him to go screw himself.
Instead she found herself sitting on a bench in Madison
Square Park, waiting for him to arrive, looking at every
boy that walked by, waiting to see if the months had been
as cruel to him as they had to her.
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The park was neutral ground. That was one condition
she made him agree to. They had to meet far enough away
from both their offices that they could sit, and talk, and see
what was what, without any distractions.
Amanda folded her arms across her chest. The sun was
bright over the trees. She sat and watched couples lounging
on the green grass. The line snaking outside the Shake Shack,
home of the best burgers in NYC. Her purse was splayed
open slightly, and Amanda noticed the glint of her keychain.
Attached to the silver loop that held her keys was a small red
heart made of leather. Henry had brought it home one day.