CHAPTER 15 #2
He had escaped.
He had escaped the grief. He had escaped the date. He had escaped the heaviness of this room.
And he had left me here to hold it alone.
I realized then, sitting on the dusty floor of the nursery-that-never-was, that I had been alone for a long time.
I was alone when I painted the kitchen.
I was alone when I planned the garden.
I was alone in the Quiet Room with Avery.
I was alone on the bathroom floor.
I was alone in the bed while he stared out the window.
And I was alone now.
The marriage wasn't a partnership. It was a relay race where he had dropped the baton miles ago, and I was still running, gasping for air, pretending that he was right behind me.
I lifted my head.
I looked at the window. The sky was darkening. The grey was turning to charcoal.
I looked at the rocking chair.
I imagined myself sitting in it. Holding a baby.
But the baby in my imagination didn't have a face. And the man standing in the doorway didn't have a face either.
The picture was blank.
I stayed there for a long time. The shadows stretched across the floor, long fingers of darkness reaching for me. The room grew cold.
I didn't move. I let the cold seep into me. I wanted to feel it. I wanted to feel the reality of my life, stripped of the warmth I had tried to manufacture.
This is it, I told myself. This is the truth.
Cold. Empty. Alone.
* * *
At 4:00 p.m., I heard the front door open.
The sound startled me. It was loud in the quiet house.
Declan.
He was early. He wasn't supposed to be off until tomorrow morning.
Panic spiked in my chest. Not the panic of a lover caught cheating, but the panic of a griever caught grieving.
I couldn't let him find me here.
If he found me sitting on the floor of the empty nursery, on the due date, he would have to deal with it. He would have to perform. He would have to hold me and say "I'm sorry" and pretend that he remembered.
And I couldn't bear the performance. I couldn't bear the hollow comfort.
I scrambled up. My legs were stiff. I smoothed my hair. I brushed the dust off my pajama pants.
I stepped out of the nursery. I closed the door.
Click.
The sound was final. I sealed the grief back inside.
I walked down the hall. I heard him in the kitchen. The sound of water running. The sound of a glass being set down.
I took a breath. I put on my mask. The calm face. The "settled" wife.
I walked down the stairs.
Declan was standing at the sink, drinking a glass of water. He was still in his uniform. He looked sweaty, disheveled.
He turned when he heard me.
"Hey," he said. "You're home. I thought you might be at the store."
"I was upstairs," I said. "You're early."
"Yeah," he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. "Got cut loose early. Miller picked up the rest of the shift. I've got a headache."
"Oh," I said. "Do you want some ibuprofen?"
"Already took some," he said.
He leaned against the counter. He looked at me.
"What did you do today?" he asked.
The question was casual. Conversational.
I looked at him. I looked at his eyes. They were clear, unburdened.
He didn't know.
He honestly, truly didn't know.
He didn't know that I had spent the day walking through the ruins of our marriage. He didn't know that I had sat on the floor of the room where our son should have slept. He didn't know that today was the day our lives were supposed to change forever.
To him, it was just Tuesday. A Tuesday with a headache.
"Nothing much," I said. "Just... laundry. Tidying up."
"Nice," he said. He turned back to the sink to rinse his glass. "We should order pizza. I'm too tired to cook."
"Pizza sounds fine," I said.
He didn't look at the calendar. He didn't look at the X.
He walked past me into the living room.
"I'm gonna shower," he said over his shoulder. "Order pepperoni?"
"Okay," I said.
I stood in the kitchen. I listened to his footsteps on the stairs. I listened to the bathroom door close. I heard the shower start.
I looked at the calendar one last time.
The black X stared back at me.
It wasn't a target anymore. It wasn't a due date.
It was a finish line.
He hadn't forgotten the baby. He had simply moved on. He had survived the fire, and he was walking away from the ashes, assuming I was right behind him.
But I wasn't.
I was still in the fire. I was standing in the center of the burn.
And looking at his empty glass on the counter, looking at the careless way he had moved through the day that broke me, I finally understood.
He wasn't coming back for me.
He never came back. He just escaped.
I walked over to the calendar.
I reached up and pulled it off the wall. The thumbtack pinged onto the counter.
I folded the calendar in half. Then in quarters. The black X disappeared into the folds.
I walked to the trash can. I opened the lid.
I dropped it in.
It sat on top of the coffee grounds and the eggshells. Trash.
"Pepperoni," I whispered to the empty room.
I didn't order the pizza.
I walked to the window and looked out at the street. The sleet had started. It was ticking against the glass, a million tiny frozen tears.
I didn't feel sad anymore.
The sadness had evaporated in the nursery. It had been replaced by something colder. Something harder.
Clarity.
I wasn't a rock. I wasn't an anchor.
I was a woman who was tired of being the only one remembering.
I turned away from the window. I turned away from the kitchen.
I went to the living room and sat on the couch. I waited for him to come down. I waited to eat the pizza. I waited to play the part of the wife for one more night.
But inside, the house was already empty. The lights were out. The doors were locked.
And the woman who lived there was gone.