Chapter 9
Chapter Nine
The bouquet was too much. Carter knew it the moment the florist wrapped the stems in brown paper, tying the bundle with twine that felt,.
Tulips, hyacinths, white roses—a spring arrangement in shades of white and pale purple that cost more than a decent bottle of whiskey and carried approximately the same weight in the currency of apology: none.
He held it at his side as he climbed the stairs to Meg’s building.
He pressed the buzzer. Once, twice—the third time he held it down, his finger pressing into the plastic until the intercom crackled and a voice came through that was not Savannah’s.
“Who is it?”
“Carter.”
A pause. He could picture Meg on the other side of the door, her hand on the intercom button, her face arranged into the expression he had earned.
“Please let me in Meg.” A pause. “Please.”
“I’ll be right down.”
He waited. The flowers grew heavier in his hand. His body ached in places he had not registered until now—his shoulders tight from the drive, his jaw clenched so hard he had to consciously loosen it, his eyes dry and gritty from a night that had contained approximately forty-five minutes of sleep.
The stairwell door opened. Meg stood in the frame, her arms crossed over a faded university sweatshirt. Her expression was not hostile. It was something worse: disgusted. The face of a woman who had already decided what she thought of him and saw no reason to perform the work of changing her mind.
“She doesn’t have to see you,” Meg said.
Her voice was flat. Not unkind, exactly. The tone of someone stating a fact that required no elaboration.
“I know that.” Carter held the flowers at his side. He did not hold them out like the peace offering they were supposed to be, because he knew, with cold clarity that flowers could not even start to be enough. “I’ll leave if you want me to. But I’d like the chance to talk to her.”
Meg studied him. Her eyes moved over his face—the stubble he had not bothered to shave, the dark circles under his eyes, the collar of his shirt still open from the night before where he had ripped his tie off and dropped it on the floor.
She studied him the way a doctor might study a patient whose symptoms did not match the expected presentation: with professional curiosity and a certain wariness.
The silence lasted long enough that Carter shifted his weight. His right foot moved an inch to the left on the worn carpet of the hallway, and the sound of it—the soft scrape of his shoe against fiber—seemed to travel the entire length of the corridor.
“Wait here,” Meg said.
She stepped back. The door remained open a few inches, and through the gap Carter caught a glimpse of the apartment interior: the worn gray sofa with its knit blanket thrown across the arm, a floor lamp casting a low yellow circle of light onto the hardwood, a coffee table with two mugs on it.
He stood in the hallway with the bouquet hanging from his fist. The paper crinkled softly as his grip adjusted.
Somewhere down the corridor, a door opened and closed.
A toilet flushed behind a thin wall. The ordinary soundtrack of a building where people lived their ordinary lives, uninterrupted by the particular wreckage of his own.
The apartment door opened wider. Not Meg this time.
Savannah stood in the space between the hallway and the living room.
She was wearing an oversized shirt that fell to mid-thigh—one of his, he realized with a jolt that traveled from his sternum to his fingertips, the blue Oxford he had left on the chair in their bedroom a week ago and had not thought to look for since.
Seeing her wear it gave him a thrilling thought: I might still have a chance.
Her feet were bare on the hardwood. Her hair was pulled back from her face in a knot that had started neat and was coming loose, strands falling along her temples and the curve of her jaw. She had not put on makeup. Her face was pale, her eyes clear and steady.
She looked at him. She did not say anything. She did not cross her arms. She did not step forward or back. She stood in the doorway and looked at him with an expression that contained no anger, no hurt, nothing but the quiet assessment of a woman who had run out of fucks to give.
“You don’t have to listen to me,” Carter said. His voice came out lower than he intended, rough from the whiskey and the night and the drive and the words he had already said to too many people who were not her. “But I hope you will.”
“I know,” she said.
Two words. Flat. Even. Delivered with the same measured cadence she had used in the entryway of his parents’ house when she told Lily to take her hands off her husband, and the sound of them traveled through him like something physical, settling in the space behind his ribs where the truth had been trying to find room for months.
She stepped back. The movement was small. The door was open, and the apartment beyond it was warm and lived-in and contained the woman he had married and the life he had nearly lost through the simple, catastrophic failure of paying attention.
Carter crossed the threshold. The flowers crinkled in his hand.
He sat on the edge of the armchair—a faded blue thing with a dip in the cushion.
Savannah took the far end of the sofa. She pulled her knees up to her chest, her bare feet pressed against the cushion, her body angled toward the wall rather than toward him.
The distance between them was precisely the width of the coffee table, plus the additional eighteen inches she had carved out by choosing the furthest possible point on the sofa. He noted it. He did not comment on it.
Meg appeared from the kitchen with two glasses of water. She set them on the coffee table with quiet efficiency, and then she was gone, the bedroom door closing behind her with a soft click that might have been considerate or might have been pointed.
He set the flowers on the table. The stems shifted, a tulip bending slightly under the weight of the arrangement, and he left it there. He did not push the bouquet toward her. He did not mention the flowers at all.
“You were right,” he said. “I’m sorry. I fucked up.”
The words left his mouth and traveled the short distance between the armchair and the sofa. Savannah’s eyes moved to his face. She held his gaze with the steady, assessing look of a woman who had heard enough promises to know the difference between words and their actions.
“I’ve been making a list,” Carter said. His tone was that of a man who had spent the drive from his parents’ house assembling evidence against himself and found the case overwhelming.
“Since last night. Since you walked in and I saw your face and I finally understood what you’ve been seeing all along.
What I’ve been blind to. What I didn’t want to see. ”
He leaned forward. His elbows found his knees, his hands hanging between them, and he looked at the water glass on the table rather than at her because looking at her directly while he said these things felt like standing in a wind that was too strong to face head-on.
“The dress comment. At that family dinner. Lily said your tart reminded her of the pie we used to share at Perkins, and I laughed. I laughed on the drive home when you brought it up. I told you she meant well.” He paused.
The memory had edges he had not allowed himself to feel until now.
“The casserole dish. Last Thanksgiving. Lily brought the pumpkin pie your recipe and my mother beamed at her like she’d hung the moon, and your pecan pie sat there until my father cut a piece out of obligation and said it was ‘very nutty.’ I watched it happen. I ate two slices of Lily’s pie.”
Savannah’s expression did not change. Her jaw was set, her eyes on his face, and she did not interrupt. She let him speak the way a court stenographer lets a witness testify: with professional detachment and absolute attention.
“The old stories. Every Sunday. Lily telling some anecdote from high school or college that left you standing outside the circle of laughter, and me laughing along because it was easier than noticing you weren’t laughing.
The family photo from Christmas. Lily stepped into the space beside me before you could get there.
She said you should stand in front because you’re shorter, and I didn’t correct her.
I stood there with her hand on my shoulder and you slightly apart, and I smiled for the camera like nothing was wrong. ”
His voice had dropped. Each sentence arrived quieter than the one before it, as if the volume of his confession was inversely proportional to the weight of what he was admitting.
He kept his eyes on her face even when she looked away—which she did, twice, her gaze moving to the window, to the flowers on the table, anywhere but his face—and he followed her there with his words, refusing the easy out of her averted eyes.
“You went quiet on the drive home from that Christmas. I asked what was wrong. You said nothing. And I accepted it because accepting it was easier than pressing, easier than having the conversation I knew we needed to have.”
He ran a hand through his hair. The gesture was rough, frustrated, his fingers dragging through strands.
“I made you prove pain I should have believed without proof. I treated your composure like evidence that you weren’t really hurting.
I made you sound jealous because I couldn’t believe you were right. ”
The last sentence hung between them. Carter watched it land on Savannah’s face—the slight tightening around her mouth, the way her fingers curled against her knee, a small, involuntary movement she did not try to hide.
“Why?” she asked. Her voice was level. Absolutely steady. “Why did it take with her hand on your chest for you to finally hear it?”