"Gina, please—"
"We said the truth," she said. "That was the whole thing. That was the prize. The truth."
She put her coat back on. She did it wrong, one arm inside out, and had to do it again, which made it worse. He reached for her and she stepped back.
"Don't," she said. "I'm going."
"Let me at least drive you—"
"You don't have a car," said Gina, "you take the bus, like a person," and she went down three flights of stairs and out into the snow on Belden Avenue, and she did not look back. Never look back. You'll lose a step.
It was only when she was on the Clark Street bus, halfway to the Loop, staring out the fogged window at the Christmas lights going by, that she realized she had left her grandmother's ornaments from Palermo in a shopping bag on his hallway floor.
*