Chapter 13 #2
I almost laughed. The word still landed strangely in this room, between the two of us, when Mrs. Thompson knew exactly what the engagement was.
"He held my hand under the table."
She smiled, slightly.
"He's been good," I said. "Better than good. He didn't have to take any of this on. He has."
"You're lucky to have him on your side, sweetheart."
"I am."
She nodded, picked the towel back up, and started wiping flour off the front of her apron.
"Alright. Take your inventory home if you want. I'll do the count. Go be with your son this afternoon."
"Mrs. Thompson—"
"Go on."
She went back to the kitchen with the towel over her shoulder. I stood at the prep table for a second longer. Then I picked up my purse from under the counter and headed for the door.
The drive home took eight minutes. The building was on a quiet street, one of those mid-rise places that always smelled faintly of someone else's cooking in the stairwell. I let myself in with the key Cole had cut me the day we'd signed the lease.
The kitchen light was on at the end of the short hall. I heard Cole's voice—low, patient, explaining something. Then Noah's voice, asking a question I couldn't quite catch.
I set my purse down on the bench by the door and hung my coat.
I walked toward the kitchen.
They were at the table together. A model plane was spread out in pieces across a clean section of the table—wings, fuselage, tiny plastic propellers, a tube of glue, a sheet of decals.
Cole had Noah's hands in his. He was showing him how to press a small piece against another small piece and hold it for thirty seconds while the glue set.
Noah was concentrating. His mouth was a little open, the way it got when he was thinking.
Neither of them saw me.
I stopped in the kitchen doorway.
Cole said, "Steady. Don't move it."
"I'm not."
"Good."
Cole counted out loud, slowly. One. Two. Three. Noah's hands stayed where Cole had put them. Cole was watching Noah's hands the way I had watched him watch the judge yesterday—fully, no movement to spare. Noah was watching the piece.
Twelve months ago, Noah would not have been able to sit still for thirty seconds. Twelve months ago, Noah had not had a man in his life whose patience had ever once landed on him as patience.
I didn't know what to call what was happening in my chest.
I stood there until Cole hit thirty.
"Good." Cole let go of Noah's hands. "Now we let it rest a minute before we do the next one."
Noah looked up to ask his next question and saw me.
"Mom!"
He came around the table fast and wrapped his arms around my middle. He smelled like glue and the slight chemical sweetness of the stickers from the decal sheet.
"Hey, bud."
"Cole's helping me build a Spitfire."
"I see that."
Cole was already standing. He had a dish towel slung over his shoulder.
"Hey." He said it the way he always said it. Same flat, even tone. "How was your day?"
"Mrs. Thompson sent me home."
His eyes stayed on me a second longer than they would have a week ago.
"You okay?"
"I'm okay. Just—a long morning."
"I made dinner. It's been keeping warm in the oven."
"You didn't have to."
"You weren't here. The two of us got hungry."
The two of us. Cole said it without any weight on it, the way a person said a thing because it was the most natural way to say it.
The two of us were Cole and Noah. The two of us were a unit that had eaten lunch together while I'd been at the bakery counting boxes I hadn't actually counted.
The two of us were a thing that hadn't existed eight months ago and now did.
I took my coat the rest of the way off and hung it on the back of the chair instead of the hook by the door.
"I'm going to go wash up."
Cole had made a roast chicken. He'd cooked the vegetables in the same pan—carrots and small potatoes browned in the bottom.
There was bread on the cutting board. He'd warmed it in the oven.
Noah had set the table with three places, the way Cole had taught him to set the table—fork on the left, knife on the right, glass to the upper right.
I sat down. Cole brought over the pan and started serving.
"This looks good," I said.
"It's chicken."
"It's a chicken better than a chicken should be."
He gave me half a smile. The kind I'd watched him give Davis the one time I had been at the firehouse. Quick, then gone.
Noah piled a leg and a thigh onto his plate without being asked.
He had gotten over asking permission for second helpings about a month ago, which had felt like its own small graduation.
I'd watched him learn that food could just be food at this table—that asking for more was not going to get him a lecture about appetite, that taking what he needed was not going to get him a lesson about gratitude.
Cole sat and passed the bread to me. I took a piece and passed it to Noah.
We ate for a few minutes without talking. The radio was off. The window over the sink showed the sky going copper.
"I picked Noah up from school," Cole said.
"I figured."
"His teacher wanted to confirm we got the email about the field trip in three weeks."
"I read it this morning."
"He got a permission slip. It's on the fridge."
"I'll sign it tonight."
Noah was watching the two of us the way he watched parents on TV shows—checking the texture, learning the shape of the thing he was supposed to be learning.
Cole set his fork down. "I want to talk to you both about the GAL."
I set my fork down, too.
"What's a GAL?" Noah asked.
"Guardian ad Litem," Cole said. "It's a person the court is going to send to talk with us about how things are going. They'll want to come to the apartment. They'll want to talk with you. They'll want to see how we live."
"When?"
"Inside the week."
Noah thought about that. He chewed his potato carefully.
"What do they want to know?"
"Whether you're safe. Whether you're being taken care of. Whether the adults in your life are doing right by you."
"Are they going to ask about Dad?"
"They might. You can answer however feels true to you. You don't have to perform anything for them."
Noah nodded.
"Mom." He had turned to me now. "Can I ask something?"
"Of course, bud."
"Can I have my own room?"
I hadn't expected the question. Neither had Cole, from the small still beat that landed between us across the table.
"You don't like your room?"
"I like my room. I just—I'm nine. I think I should have my own room."
"You sleep with me."
"That's the part. I think I should not be sleeping in the same room as my mom anymore."
He said it the way he said most things now—careful, deliberate, the way a kid said something he'd thought about for a while before bringing it up.
"Bud—"
"Mom. I'm nine."
I looked at Cole. Cole was looking at me. His face hadn't moved. His hand was on the edge of the table.
"Also," Noah said, and now he sounded like a kid who'd been working up the nerve to make the second half of his point, "wouldn't it look more real to the lady from the court if I had my own room?
She's coming to see how we live. If she sees me sleeping in the same room as my mom, she might think it's weird.
And if you and Cole are getting married, you should be in the same room. That's how it usually works."
The kitchen was very quiet.
Cole and I looked at each other.
I had nothing to say. Cole, mercifully, did.
"That's a good point, bud."
"Right?"
"Right." Cole looked back at me again. The look held for a beat. "Tessa and I will talk about it. Then we'll figure it out."
"Okay."
"Eat your chicken."
Noah ate his chicken.
I picked up my fork again. The chicken was very good. I couldn't have told you what it tasted like.
Noah went to bed at nine. Cole read with him for ten minutes—he'd taken over the bedtime story routine the second week we'd been here, and Noah had started waiting for him on the bed like he'd never had a bedtime story from anyone else.
By nine-twenty, Noah was asleep. By nine-thirty, Cole had eased the door shut behind him.
I was at the kitchen sink, rinsing the dinner plates when he came back in. He didn't go to the table. He came over to the sink, picked up the dish towel, and started drying.
We stood there for a minute and worked.
"He's right," Cole said.
"I know."
"It's a good idea, separate from everything else. He's nine. He's going to be ten in March. Boys his age want their own rooms."
"I know."
"It also makes the rest of the apartment read the right way for the GAL."
"I know."
I set the last plate on the rack. Cole took it and dried it. He set it on the stack.
"He goes in my room," Cole said. "I move into yours."
"That's the part I'm trying to figure out."
"What part?"
I turned to face him. I dried my hands on a corner of the towel he was still holding.
"I've been sleeping in there with him. The arrangement was—"
"I know."
"And now—"
"I'll sleep on the floor."
I looked at him.
"You'll what?"
"The floor. I have a sleeping bag from camping. I have a pillow. The carpet is fine."
"Cole—"
"I'm not letting you sleep on the floor, and I'm not making you sleep next to me. The floor is fine."
He said it the way he said all the things he'd been saying since I'd asked him for help. The way that didn't invite negotiation, but also didn't impose. He had come up with the answer that protected the boundary. He was offering it.
"Cole. It's your apartment."
"It's our apartment."
"You signed the lease in both our names because I needed it for the petition. The rent is yours."
"I don't think that's the math we're doing."
I looked at him. He still had the dish towel in his hand. He hadn't looked away from me. The kitchen was very still.
"Fine. The floor."
"Fine."
"Until we figure out something better."
"Sure."
We dried for another minute.
"There's one more thing," he said.
"What?"
"The visitation. The supervised visits."
"What about them?"
"I want to be the one taking him."