Chapter Fifteen—Julie #2
“I’m giving the kitchen time to heal.” Dalen puts another slice of bread on my sandwich. “You’re in a wheelchair, and nobody can save dinner.”
“I still have taste buds.”
“That’s the problem.”
I tug harder on the resistance band to hide my smile.
Sunday doesn’t hurt quite as much this week.
DURING THE SECOND WEEK, Dalen starts leaving the house again.
His therapist gets the first outing.
Yes, therapist.
“You found a therapist?”
“Last week.”
I stare at him. “How?”
“I called.”
I keep staring.
Dalen gives in. “I had Calla find three names.”
“There he is.”
“I picked one myself.”
I pat his arm. “Very independent.”
“I’m growing.”
He goes twice a week. I don’t ask what they talk about because that’s his.
The second time he leaves, he goes to work for four hours because I tell him his hovering is making me consider another assault. When he comes home, I’m asleep on the sitting-room sofa with fabric samples across my lap.
I wake later beneath a blanket.
The little things keep accumulating.
He asks before helping with my chair. He stops monitoring my medication once I tell him I have it handled. When I complain about a client, he listens without offering to buy the client’s company. When I need a folding worktable, he asks what size and brings exactly that size.
One afternoon, I hear him tell Calla, “I don’t know. I’ll ask Julie.”
That shouldn’t be remarkable. Six words from a man who built his life on having every answer. I sit in the guest room with my laptop on my knees, listening to him learn a language he should’ve spoken all along.
It is.
THE CALL FROM MEG COMES late Thursday afternoon.
Her attorney has already asked mine twice whether I’ll speak to her. I’ve said no twice.
Today, I say yes.
Dalen is home, but I take the call alone in the guest room.
Meg sounds small, and I hate that it still affects me.
We spend the first several minutes stumbling through a conversation neither of us knows how to have. She apologizes. I listen. She tells me she was desperate, terrified, angry, and ashamed.
Then her voice drops. “What if this is happening to me?”
I close my eyes. She doesn’t have to explain. “I don’t know.”
“What if I’m sick?” Her breath catches. “You know what Mom was like. What if I’m like her?”
The old instinct rises immediately. Find a doctor. Make appointments. Get records. Call her attorney. Figure out what this means for the charges.
I recognize it now.
“I’ll tell your doctors our family history if they ask me. I won’t lie about it.”
Meg starts crying. “You could help me.”
“I am not making this go away.”
“You’re my sister.”
“I know.”
Her voice cracks. “You always take care of me.”
For years, that sentence would’ve worked.
“I was twelve, Meg.”
She stops crying for a second.
“I was twelve when I started taking care of you. I shouldn’t have been responsible for either of us.”
“Julie—”
“I love you. I probably always will.” My voice breaks, but I keep going. “I won’t save you from this.”
I end the call a few minutes later and sit with the phone in my lap.
The guest room is quiet. Late afternoon light comes through the window at an angle that catches the dust in the air, and I watch it drift while my hands stop shaking.
I just refused to save my sister. I’ve spent twenty years building an identity around protecting her, and I let it go in four sentences.
I don’t take it back.
I call Dalen.
He stops inside the doorway. “What do you need?”
“You.”
He crosses the room, and I hold out my arms. He bends carefully around my brace as I bury my face against his shoulder.
“I was twelve. I never thought about how insane that was.”
His hand moves slowly over my hair. “I think you deserved someone taking care of you too.”
I cry harder.
He stays.
ON SUNDAY, ROSEMARY reaches the guest room shortly after five.
I call downstairs.
Dalen answers on the second ring. “Hi.”
“You’re cooking.”
“That accusation requires evidence.”
“I can smell rosemary.” I shift the pillow beneath my knee. “What are you destroying?”
“Chicken.”
“Do we have backup food?”
“I’ve improved.”
His voice sounds like every Sunday we’ve ever had together, easy and warm, as if nothing between us has fractured. I press the phone harder against my ear. “You’ve been married to me for years and haven’t improved. My knee hurts, so you’re on your own tonight.”
His tone changes. “Do you need anything?”
“Dinner.”
“I’ll bring it up.”
I hang up and stare at the ceiling. Rosemary drifts up through the vents, and my chest aches with something I can’t name because it’s too close to hope.
Twenty minutes later, he arrives with two plates on a tray and a glass of wine for me. I’m off the stronger pain medication now, and the surgeon says I can start putting limited weight on my leg next week.
Dalen sets the tray across my lap and takes the chair beside the bed. I cut into the chicken while he watches with entirely too much interest.
“This is terrible.”
His face falls. “Seriously?”
I laugh. “No. It’s actually decent.”
“Decent?” He takes a bite of his own. “I cooked edible poultry.”
“Once. Don’t get cocky.”
He accepts this historic achievement with considerably more pride than it deserves.
We eat while I tell him about a client who has changed her mind three times about bathroom tile. Dalen tells me about an acquisition Calla has threatened to finish without him if he keeps rewriting the same paragraph.
For a while, we’re us.
Different, bruised, careful, but us.
When we’re finished, Dalen takes the plates downstairs and returns with two pieces of chocolate cake from Laurent’s.
I eye the cake. “Trying to bribe me?”
“I bought enough to earn an opinion.”
The callback makes me smile.
He sits on the edge of the bed this time.
I let him.
We share the cake because his slice is bigger. Halfway through mine, I set down my fork. “I miss you.”
Dalen sets his plate aside. “I miss you too.”
“I’ve missed you the whole time.” I pick a crumb from the blanket. “I’m still angry, and I still don’t trust you the way I did.”
“I understand.”
The guest room is dim except for the lamp on my side. His face is half in shadow, and he’s sitting close enough that I can see the crease between his eyebrows that appears when he’s trying not to say too much. I’ve loved that crease for years. It’s still there.
“Why haven’t you asked me to come upstairs?”
Dalen rests his forearms on his thighs. “Because you haven’t told me you want to.”
“You haven’t asked me to come back at all.”
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I won’t.”
The answer comes easily now. A month ago, it wouldn’t have. He would’ve pushed, offered a plan, remodeled something. The man sitting on my bed has stopped reaching for a solution before I finish talking, and I don’t know what to do with how much that means to me.
I study him for a moment. “What are you learning in therapy?”
“Fixing things makes me feel safe. If I can solve something, I don’t have to admit I’m scared.
” He glances toward the remodeled bathroom.
“When you told me things I couldn’t explain, I kept looking for an answer.
Meg gave me one, and I chose it because uncertainty scared me.
Then you got hurt, and I did it again. I couldn’t fix your knee, so I fixed a bathroom you didn’t ask me to touch. ”
A reluctant laugh escapes me.
“You paid for my fear before. I don’t want you doing that again.
” Dalen shifts toward me, then catches himself.
“I don’t expect a couple weeks of better behavior to erase what I did.
I don’t expect you to trust me because I finally learned how to hear no.
I want our marriage. I want you. If you decide you can’t give me either one, I’ll still be sorry. ”
I look toward our wedding photograph on the dresser. “What happens the next time I tell you something you can’t prove?”
“I ask what you need from me.” His voice is quiet. “Then I listen to the answer.”
My throat tightens. “I don’t want to go back to the marriage we had.”
Dalen flinches before I reach for his hand.
“I want us to do better.”
His fingers close around mine.
“This is tentative.”
“I can do tentative.”
I raise my eyebrows. “You remodeled a bathroom after I specifically told you I needed space.”
“That was before I understood tentative.”
I snort. “You bought enough flowers for a state funeral.”
“I was still learning.”
I laugh and touch his cheek.
He turns into my palm. “Can I kiss you?”
“Yes.”
His mouth meets mine softly.
There’s no rush toward sex and no attempt to turn one kiss into proof that everything is repaired. I’m still healing, and our marriage is too.
When we separate, I keep my hand against his cheek. “I think I want to come home.”
Dalen glances around the guest room. “Technically—”
“Don’t.”
“Sorry.” He covers my hand with his. “I know what you mean.”
“I mean really come home. Eventually. When I can manage the stairs.”
“Okay.”
I poke his shoulder. “You’re supposed to look happier.”
“I’m trying very hard not to scare you with enthusiasm.”
“You can be happy.”
That finally gets the full smile he’s been suppressing.
I haven’t seen it in weeks.
“Stay tonight,” I say.
His attention shifts toward the empty side of the bed. “Here?”
“Yes. Just sleep.”
“I can do that.”
“You snore.”
Dalen looks offended. “I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
He gets up long enough to change and brush his teeth. When he comes back, he climbs into the other side of the guest bed while I arrange my pillows and brace.
I turn off the lamp.
His hand rests on the mattress between us.
I slide my fingers through his.
He lets me decide how tightly we hold on. I hold tightly.