Page 49 of Ewan

He holds my eyes.

Does he want to know if I’m home over the weekend?

“They can leave it in the front,” I say. “Oh, I need to pay for it.”

He gives me a curt shake of his head.

“Don’t worry about that. They charge the cost to my account.”

I open my mouth to ask something else but close it before I open it again.

“Thank you. How can I repay you?”

I’m being silly, but I sound serious. I am serious.

He ponders what to say next when a sharp knock on the door makes both of us flick our eyes in that direction, and he reflexively and discretely touches his jacket.

I’ve only seen people do that when they carry a gun.

Apprehension soars through me.

He looks at me.

“Are you expecting guests?” he asks as if wanting to discern whether the person outside the door is here for me or him.

“No. I never…”

The second knock on the door arrives.

I’ve never had people knock at my door so late. I rarely have anyone show up at my door.

Everybody calls first.

My packages arrive during the day and I find them on the porch or at the door when I return from work.

I push off the counter and head to the entrance while he pivots and strangely steps to the side to be out of the line of sight of the person outside the door.

I barely make it to the exit and Joachim’s voice rings outside.

“Scarlett?” he bellows out.

Is he drunk? Pissed? He sounds pissed.

But why would he be at my door?

I haven’t talked to him since the end of October when I asked him for the fourth time to search through his books and find my birth certificate.

I was pretty sure he put it somewhere by mistake and I didn’t want to go through the trouble of replacing it when all he needed to do was look for it.

He brushed me off every time, and I bet he didn’t want to get into an argument with his girlfriend because of me.

She doesn’t like me much––I don’t know why.

“Open the door, Scarlett. I found your birth certificate.”

Heat and cold sweep through me, his tone irritating me to no end. He sounds like the little entitled prick he has been since we split up.

He’d been cranky before when he had gotten it on with his new woman, but I thought he had a lingering cold.

---