CHAPTER 10 #2
"Are you?" he asked.
"Yes," I said.
But my "yes" had a hollow ring to it. Because I had seen the drift. I had seen the tiny, microscopic movement that betrayed the lie.
He was happy we were okay. He was happy the crisis was managed.
But was he happy with me? Or was he just happy he had survived the fire?
I didn't ask. I couldn't. The moment was too fragile. If I poked it, it would shatter. So I just smiled and pulled the quilt up to my chin.
* * *
That night, the fog lifted.
I woke up at 2:00 a.m. The bed was cold beside me.
Panic, instant and sharp, spiked in my chest. I reached out. Empty sheets.
"Declan?" I whispered.
No answer.
I sat up. The cottage was dark, but moonlight was pouring in through the window—sharp, silver, unobstructed moonlight. The fog was gone.
I got out of bed. I pulled on Declan's flannel shirt, which was hanging on the bedpost. I walked into the main room.
Empty.
The embers in the fireplace were dying, casting a faint, red glow on the rug.
I looked at the front door. It was closed.
I looked at the sliding glass door that led to the back porch.
It was cracked open. A sliver of night air was leaking in.
I walked to the glass.
Declan was there.
He was sitting in one of the wooden Adirondack chairs. He was wearing his sweatpants and a hoodie. He was barefoot.
He wasn't moving. He was just sitting there, staring out.
I stepped onto the porch. The wood was cold under my feet. The air was freezing—a sharp, clear cold that smelled of the deep ocean.
The sky was incredible. Without the fog, and miles from the city lights, the stars were a dense, glittering dust across the black. The Milky Way was a smudge of white chalk.
And below, the ocean. You could see the whitecaps now, glowing in the moonlight, breaking against the shore.
Declan didn't turn around when I stepped out. He must have heard me—the door slid on a track—but he didn't move.
He was leaning forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped. He was staring at the horizon.
I stood behind him. I watched him watching the sea.
He looked... solitary.
He didn't look like a husband. He didn't look like a partner. He looked like a man alone at the edge of the world.
There was a profound stillness to him. It wasn't the peace of the afternoon. It was a heavy, contemplative stillness.
What are you thinking about? I wanted to ask.
Are you thinking about the fire?
Are you thinking about the baby we almost had?
Are you thinking about her?
Or were you thinking about nothing? Were you just enjoying the lightness?
The lightness of being awake while the world sleeps. The lightness of the ocean, which demands nothing from you but your gaze.
He was facing away from the cottage. Facing away from the bed. Facing away from me.
I realized then, with a cold clarity that matched the air, that this was his natural state. Facing away.
He loved me. I believed that. He wanted to be in the house. I believed that.
But his eyes would always drift to the window. His soul would always be on the porch, looking at the water, wondering what it would feel like to just... drift.
I didn't say anything. I didn't touch his shoulder.
I stood there for a minute, shivering in his shirt, watching him be alone.
Then I turned around. I slid the door shut, quietly.
I went back to bed. I lay in the cold sheets and waited for him to come back.
He came in twenty minutes later. He smelled of cold air and salt. He climbed into bed and wrapped his freezing limbs around me, seeking warmth.
"Couldn't sleep," he whispered. "Stars were amazing."
"Mmm," I pretended to be half-asleep.
He held me tight. He anchored himself to me.
But I knew where he had been. He had been out there. In the vast, open dark.
* * *
We drove home on Sunday.
The traffic on Route 6 was light. The weekend was over. The bubble was popping.
We listened to a podcast about history—something safe, something neutral. Declan held my hand across the console.
"That was perfect," he said as we crossed the Sagamore Bridge, the metal girders flashing overhead like ribs. "Exactly what we needed."
"It was," I said. "Thank you for planning it."
"We should do it again," he said. "Maybe in the fall. When the leaves change."
"I'd like that," I said.
He squeezed my thigh. A gesture of possession. A gesture of affection. We did it. We survived.
Then, his phone buzzed.
It was sitting in the cup holder. Screen up.
Bzzzt.
A text.
Declan's eyes flicked down. He saw the screen.
I saw him see it.
I couldn't see the name. It could have been Roach. It could have been his mom. It could have been a spam alert about his car warranty.
He didn't pick it up. He didn't tap it.
He glanced at it, his face unreadable behind his sunglasses, and then looked back at the road.
He reached out and flipped the phone over. Face down.
He didn't say "It's Roach." He didn't say "Spam."
He said nothing.
He just put it face down and turned up the volume on the podcast.
I stared at the black plastic case of the phone.
Why didn't he check it?
If it was innocent, why hide it?
Or was he hiding it because he knew I would wonder? Was he protecting me from my own paranoia?
Or was it... not innocent?
The silence filled the car. It was louder than the history podcast. It was louder than the wind rushing past the windows.
I looked out at the highway. The trees were blurring by.
Ask him, the voice in my head screamed. Just ask him who it is.
But I didn't.
I was too tired. I was too afraid to ruin the "perfect" weekend. I was too afraid that if I asked, he would look at me with that "handling the glass" expression, that pitying, careful look that said You're crazy, Nora.
So I looked out the window. I let the silence sit between us, heavy and wet like the fog.
He squeezed my thigh again.
"Almost home," he said.
"Yeah," I said. "Almost."
I looked at the phone one last time. Face down.
And I realized that no matter how many weekends away we took, no matter how many fires he saved me from... there would always be a phone face down on the table. There would always be a porch at 2 a.m.
There would always be the drift.