Chapter 21
Chapter Twenty-One
Evan began leaving things at Abby’s apartment without either of them deciding that he should. A charger appeared beside the sofa first, followed by a clean shirt in the back of the hall closet and the coffee he preferred on the shelf above her kettle.
Abby noticed each addition because Hudson’s possessions had once filled every room of their previous apartment. Evan’s occupied less than half of one shelf, yet their presence made her more aware that he had begun spending three or four nights a week with her.
He did not arrive expecting to be fed or entertained. Some evenings he brought his laptop and worked at her kitchen table while Abby answered emails beside him, their feet occasionally touching beneath the chairs.
On better nights, they stopped early enough to watch television or walk around the block. On difficult ones, Evan fell asleep with his glasses still on and woke when Abby removed the computer from his lap.
The funding round had brought attention, meetings, and a collection of new problems that sounded expensive. Evan hired the two implementation specialists he needed, then spent most of the following week training them because he did not trust hurried preparation with a hospital system.
Abby liked listening to him talk about the work when he forgot to simplify it for her. She liked even more that he could close the computer when she asked and return to the room without behaving as if she had interrupted something more important.
On Thursday evening, she found him kneeling beside an unfinished rocking chair with an instruction booklet spread across the floor. He had removed his jacket and rolled his sleeves, but his tie remained fastened beneath his collar.
“You came directly from a funding meeting,” Abby said from the doorway. “You could have changed before assembling furniture.”
“I thought this would take twenty minutes.” Evan held up a small metal bracket and examined it from both sides. “The manufacturer appears to have counted on parents being too tired to complain.”
“Sadie said we should have bought the assembled one.” Abby crossed the room and lowered herself into the upholstered chair near the window. “I told her this rockign chair was prettier.”
“It is prettier.” Evan loosened his tie and looked at the row of parts beside him. “It is also lessening my will to live.”
Abby smiled and rested both hands over the curve of her stomach. The baby had been active since lunch, turning beneath her ribs with enough force to make her stop speaking in the middle of a meeting.
“She’s moving again,” Abby said as she pressed her palm against the place where a small heel seemed to push outward. “Come here before she stops.”
Evan set the bracket down at once. He approached her but waited until Abby reached for his wrist and guided his hand beneath hers.
The movement came again, firm against his palm. Evan’s expression changed with the same quiet astonishment he had shown the first time Abby invited him to feel it.
“She’s strong,” he said as he crouched beside the chair. “Does that hurt?”
“Sometimes.” Abby moved his hand slightly to the left. “Mostly it feels as if someone is rearranging furniture in a room that’s already too small.”
Evan kept his palm against her for another minute. When the baby settled, he leaned forward and kissed Abby through the thin fabric of her dress.
The tenderness of it made her throat tighten. Evan seemed to sense the change in her because he sat back on his heels and studied her face.
“What happened?” he asked as he rested one hand on the arm of the chair. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” Abby touched the hair above his temple, where a faint line remained from his glasses. “You did something kind, and apparently that’s enough to make me cry now.”
“You cried because the grocery store stopped carrying the crackers you liked.” Evan turned his face and kissed her palm. “I’m learning not to take every tear personally.”
“Those crackers were the only thing I could eat for two weeks.” Abby wiped beneath one eye with her free hand. “My response was proportionate.”
“Of course.” Evan rose and bent to kiss her mouth. “I sent the manufacturer a strongly worded email for discontinuing them.”
The joke made sense because Abby had watched him search three stores before ordering six boxes online. She caught his tie and kept him close for another kiss.
They left the rocking chair unfinished and ate takeout on the sofa. Later, Evan showered while Abby changed for bed, and the ordinary sounds of him moving through her bathroom produced a contentment that still carried an edge of disbelief.
He came out wearing the T-shirt and gray pants he now kept in her dresser. Abby was propped against two pillows with a parenting book open across her stomach, though she had read the same paragraph four times.
“You’re staring at the page as if it insulted you,” Evan said as he placed his phone on the bedside table. “Is the advice bad?”
“It says newborns sleep between fourteen and seventeen hours a day.” Abby closed the book and set it aside. “Sadie says those hours come in intervals designed to prevent their parents from completing a thought.”
“We’ll make a schedule.” Evan climbed into bed and adjusted the pillow behind him. “I’m good with schedules.”
Abby turned toward him. “You said ‘we.’”
Evan went still. “I did.”
She waited for him to explain, but he did not fill the silence with assurances she had not requested. He watched her and allowed her to decide what the word meant.
“I liked hearing it,” Abby said as she placed her hand over his. “It also frightened me.”
“Do you want to talk about that now?” Evan turned his hand and linked their fingers. “You can say no.”
“Not tonight.” Abby moved closer until her head rested against his shoulder. “I want one night where I don’t examine every good thing until I find the part that might hurt me.”
Evan kissed the top of her head. “Then we’ll leave it alone tonight.”
He reached for the lamp, and the room went dark.
Abby lay still and listened to his breathing slow. His hand had come to rest against the curve of her hip with no particular intention behind it, the way a hand will settle somewhere comfortable in sleep.
She was aware of the warmth of him at her back, and of the fact that he wanted her—she could feel that plainly—and that he had made no move toward anything.
But they hadn’t had sex yet. He had simply held her, the way he had for the past several weeks.
There was something almost formal about the restraint, the way it had gone unacknowledged between them, a mutual and wordless agreement that this was not the time.
She pressed her palm flat against the side of her stomach and felt the baby shift once and go still.
Hudson had treated patience as a form of deprivation.
She had learned to read his moods in doorways, in the particular way he set down a glass.
Lying here, she kept waiting for the mood to arrive and finding only the sound of Evan’s breathing and the faint noise of the street below.
The absence of something to brace against was its own sensation, not unlike the first night she had slept without checking her phone.
She did not know when she finally slept, but she knew that her body found peace, feeling safe in Evan’s arms.
Sadie arrived Saturday morning with two coffees, a bag of pastries, and the printed registration forms for the childbirth class. She placed everything on Abby’s kitchen counter before looking toward the hall.
“Is Evan here?” Sadie asked as she took off her coat, noticing Evan’s sweater on the coat rack.
“He left an hour ago for the hospital.” Abby removed a pastry from the bag and tore it in half. “He stayed last night.”
Sadie opened her coffee and took a careful sip. “Has that become a regular arrangement?”
“A few nights a week.” Abby leaned against the counter and watched her sister’s face. “You can ask what you actually want to ask.”
“I want to know whether you’re happy.” Sadie pulled out the chair beside her. “I also want to know whether you’re moving too fast.”
Abby sat opposite her. “I don’t know how to measure fast anymore.”
“You don’t have to measure it against Hudson.” Sadie pushed one of the coffees toward Abby. “Nine years with the wrong person doesn’t make a shorter relationship reckless.”
“Evan said ‘we’ when we were talking about caring for the baby.” Abby wrapped both hands around the warm cup. “I wanted him to say it, and then I spent half the night wondering whether I should have corrected him.”
Sadie folded the corner of the pastry bag. “Did he suggest that you owed him a parental role?”
“No.” Abby looked down at her coffee. “He never assumes anything. Sometimes that makes it worse because I can’t find a reason to hold him at a distance or to bring him closer.”
“Do you want one?” Sadie asked as she rested her forearms on the table. “A real reason, not a prediction about what he might feel in five years.”
Abby considered the question. “I’m afraid this relationship only works because of what happened to us. Because we have this shared betrayal.”
Sadie did not interrupt. She waited while Abby searched for words that did not sound ungrateful or disloyal.
“Evan understood everything without making me explain it,” Abby continued as she traced the cardboard seam of the cup.
“He knew what it was like to discover that years of your life had been arranged around someone else’s lies.
We became important to each other while neither of us could sleep, eat, or think clearly. ”
“And now you can do those things again,” Sadie said as she watched her. “Are you worried you won’t need him once you’re fully recovered?”
“I’m worried he won’t need me.” Abby released a breath she had been holding. “His company is succeeding. He’s meeting people who understand his work and can go anywhere with him. I’m about to have a baby whose father is a man Evan has every reason to hate.”