Chapter 16
MALLORY
By Wednesday morning, I know there are three days until Saturday.
I know it before I know the weather, before I remember whether I ordered enough kraft paper, before I pour the ginger tea Coralee swears will settle my stomach.
Three days until the market. Three days until Rourke may walk through the square again in clothes that still look too expensive no matter how plain he thinks they are. I hate that my body keeps track.
On Thursday, I catch myself wondering whether he'll choose zinnias again, or if he'll remember that the snapdragons lasted four days because he changed the water.
On Friday, I stand in front of the closet and touch the sleeve of a green dress before snatching my hand back as if the fabric burned me.
It's just the market. He's just buying flowers.
My phone lights once that afternoon.
Thank you for dinner. I know you didn't owe me that.
That's all. No second message when I don't reply. No plea. No softened memory dropped like bait. No promise about next week. I set the phone facedown on the kitchen table and stare at the back of it until the tea goes cold. His restraint is harder to hate than pressure.
On Saturday, Rourke arrives at ten past nine.
I see him before he sees me. He steps around Mrs. Larkin's jam table, pauses to let two children barrel past with paper cups of lemonade, and then nods to Mr. Hale.
The relief hits first. Then the anger at the relief. Then I take in the rest of him.
The clean line of his shoulders. The way he moves carefully through the crowd now, making himself smaller without pretending he's small. His hair is a little wind-tossed, he hasn't shaved closely enough, and there's a smudge of mud on one boot.
My mouth wants to smile. I bend over the bucket of basil and pull three stems that don't need pulling.
Coralee glances at me. "You all right?"
"Fine."
"Mm."
Rourke doesn't come straight to me. He stops at the bread stall. He waits while I wrap two bouquets for a woman from the church. When he finally reaches my table, he keeps his hands visible and his voice quiet.
"Good morning, Mallory."
"Morning."
His eyes pass over my face. Not searching my body. Not taking inventory. Just looking, and somehow that feels worse.
"What can I get you?" I ask.
"Just looking for something for my wife," he says.
My fingers tighten around the twine. I make him a bouquet with cream roses, blue cornflowers, late cosmos, and basil tucked low enough that the scent will rise when the paper shifts.
I charge him eight dollars. He pays with a ten and waits for his change.
The coins sit warm in my palm before I drop them into his.
"Thank you," he says.
A wave of nausea rolls through me so quickly I have to grip the table. The square tilts. Not much, but enough that the flower buckets blur at the edges.
"Mal?" Rourke's voice changes.
"I'm fine." I reach for my water and miss it by an inch.
He's already moving, but he stops before he comes around the stall. "Can I get that for you?"
I nod because pretending I can bend right now would be stupid. He picks up the bottle, uncaps it, and sets it beside my hand. Close enough to help. Far enough not to hover.
"Did you eat?" he asks.
"Skipped breakfast." It's the first lie that comes easily.
"I can get you something. Bring it back and?—"
"I'm fine. Promise."
His jaw tightens, but finally he nods.
"Okay," he says, and steps back.
He believes me, or he's choosing not to press. The words climb into my throat anyway.
I'm pregnant.
They sit behind my teeth while he stands there with my flowers in his hand and worry in his eyes. I can see it happen: his face going still, his life rearranging itself around a child he doesn't know exists.
I take a sip of water. "I just need a minute."
"Then take one. Take two."
He leaves without making me grateful for it. I watch him disappear into the market crowd, and the secret I want to tell him so badly staying behind with me.
That evening, the waistband of my jeans bites when I bend to untie my boots. Not much, and not enough that anyone else would notice. I know because I stand sideways in front of the old farmhouse mirror and look until my eyes ache.
My shirt still falls loose, and my apron still hides everything at the stall. In the right dress, under the right light, I'm still only Mallory. Tired, maybe. Softer if someone knows exactly where to look. I know where to look.
I lift the hem of my shirt and lay my hand low on my abdomen. There's a fullness there that could be dinner, water, or a body having an ordinary day. Nothing dramatic. Nothing round enough to announce itself. But my palm knows.
The period of effortless secrecy is ending.
Coralee knocks once before pushing the bedroom door open. "I brought crackers."
I drop my shirt. "You ever wait for an answer?"
"Not when I know you're brooding."
"I'm not brooding."
"You're standing in front of a mirror after dark with one boot on."
I look down. One boot, one sock. Fine. She has a point.
She sets the crackers on the dresser and studies my face, not my stomach. "Was it bad today?"
"No."
"Was it good?"
I sit on the edge of the bed. The mattress creaks softly beneath me. "That's the problem."
Coralee's expression shifts.
"I look forward to seeing him," I say. "I wonder what flowers he'll buy. I wonder if he'll remember things. I wanted him to stay today when I was dizzy, and then I wanted him gone before I told him everything."
"Maybe some part of you trusts him."
"Some part of me wants him."
"That too."
I press my fingers into my knee. "He says he never wanted Jocelyn."
"You don't believe him?"
"I don't know what I believe." I look to Coralee and then find I can't stand the way she's looking at me, as if she can see right through me.
"I saw her beside him, Cora. Not once. Over and over.
She knew what he needed before he asked.
She finished his sentences. She stood beside him at Ridgeline like that place was theirs to imagine.
She started to look more like his wife than I did. "
Coralee sits beside me.
"They shared wine, firelight, and a storm," I say. "And then he agreed with her to keep it from me. She gave him that watch with his initials and that engraving, and he wore it home. He wore it against his skin and never understood why that would hurt." My throat works around the last word.
Coralee is quiet for a long moment. "Do you think he loved her?"
"I think a person doesn't have to plan an affair to start leaning." I look at the floorboards, at the pale dust caught between them. "Maybe he liked being admired. Maybe he liked being understood without having to slow down. Maybe she fit the part of his life I never could."
"Or maybe losing you woke him up."
"That doesn't answer whether he would've woken up without losing me."
"No," she says. "It doesn't."
I cover my face with both hands.
Her voice gentles. "Are you still protecting yourself, honey, or are you punishing him for an answer you're afraid to ask for?"
My hands fall. "I'm not punishing him."
"I didn't say you meant to."
"He broke us."
"I know, honey."
"He made me feel crazy for seeing what was right in front of me."
"I know that too." She reaches for my hand, and I let her take it. "But refusing to decide is still a decision when another life is involved."
The room goes very still.
I pull my hand back and reach for my phone before I can think better of it. Rourke's thread is near the top because I've opened it too many times without sending anything.
I type: There's something I need to tell you.
The words look small. Too small for what they'll do.
Rourke will come. Of course he will. He'll look at me with terror, tenderness, and that awful, beautiful focus. He may leave the company tomorrow because he thinks fatherhood requires it. He may turn every flower, every apology, every patient Saturday into proof for a child instead of proof for me.
And I'll never know.
I delete the message one letter at a time. Coralee watches me do it.
"Are you afraid he'll come back because of the baby," she asks, "or are you afraid that if you forgive him, you're setting yourself up to fall all over again?"
I can't answer.
Outside the open window, the flower beds are dark shapes in the yard. Rows I planted with my own hands. Stakes, twine, soil, seedlings I worried over until they took. This life isn't imaginary anymore. It has dirt under its nails, invoices on the kitchen table, and Coralee's friendship at my side.
Rourke has started stepping into it without trying to carry me out. Wanting both feels like standing too close to a ledge.
The envelope arrives Monday.
It's thick enough that I know it doesn't belong in the farmhouse mailbox before I even see the return address. Cream paper. Embossed lettering. My married name written in careful black ink: Mrs. Mallory Carmichael.
For a second, the lane, the mailbox, and the Queen Anne's lace along the fence all fall away.
Inside is an invitation to Emmaline Whitemoor's wedding.
Beatrice's granddaughter. Sweet Emmaline, who knows all the words to 80s love ballads, and secretly reads Nicholas Sparks books.
I promised I'd be there. Not because of Rourke, and not because of the company.
Because Beatrice asked me once, quietly, and I said yes.
The venue is a Carmichael property in the city. Of course it is.
I stand in the kitchen with the invitation open in my hands and feel the walls of the farmhouse holding around me. On the window glass, my reflection looks almost unchanged. Loose shirt. Hair pinned badly. One hand drifting low before I stop it.
I can hide this for one evening. The right dress, the right posture. No one will look at me and know. But the secret has an expiration date now. So does my indecision.
Rourke will be there. Jocelyn may be there. The woman I was will be everywhere.
I run my thumb over Rourke's surname on the envelope until the paper warms beneath my skin. The husband I still love. The woman I still don't trust. The marriage I haven't ended. The child neither of us can hide from forever.
I promised Emmaline. I promised myself I'd stop disappearing.
So I set the invitation on the table, smooth it flat, and accept the thing I've been avoiding.
I'm going back.