22. Pierce
PIERCE
I stood in the nursery with Hannah's planning papers in my hand and looked at the room Sienna had designed.
Every wall was wrong. The furniture was wrong. The colors were wrong. I'd paid for it all without looking, and Sienna had built a room that belonged in a magazine spread and not in a home where a child would live. Hannah had tried to tell me. I'd waved her off.
The papers in my hand were creased from being folded and unfolded.
Hannah's handwriting covered them, neat lists and measurements and notes about what she wanted.
She'd drawn little sketches in the margins.
A bookshelf low enough for a child to reach.
A reading corner with cushions. A wall painted soft green, not the cool gray Sienna had chosen.
I wasn't sure I could do the work. At the school I'd painted walls and patched drywall and put shelves together out of boxes, but I'd never built anything from nothing. I ran companies. I made deals. I signed contracts and other people did the rest.
But I kept looking at the papers, and then at the room, and I knew it had to be done.
Sienna was gone. I'd fired her thirty-two days ago. Carter ran my business now because I couldn't focus on it and didn't trust myself to make the right calls anymore. I'd handed him the whole operation and told him to keep it running without me.
Nobody else would fix the nursery. Nobody else even knew it needed fixing. Sienna had done her job. The room looked finished. If I called someone in to redo it, they'd ask questions I didn't want to answer.
I could see it clearly now. Sienna had built this room for herself, not for Hannah. Everything in it was a choice Hannah would never make, and I'd signed off on every goddamn invoice without asking my wife what she wanted.
I had been blind.
I looked at the papers again. Hannah had written everything down.
Measurements for the shelves. Paint swatches taped to the corners.
A list of books she wanted on the lowest shelf so the baby could pull them out and look at the pictures.
She'd planned a whole room, and I'd let Sienna throw it all out.
Nobody else would do this. If I wanted the room fixed, I had to do it myself.
I set the papers on the floor and pulled out my phone. Looked at the first item on Hannah's list. Then I opened a browser and started searching for how to remove built-in shelving without wrecking the drywall.
It took me two days to tear out what Sienna had built.
I started with the shelves she'd installed too high for a child to reach. They were bolted into the studs, and I didn't have the right tools, so I went out and bought a drill and a pry bar and a level. The first shelf came off the wall in pieces. I put a gouge in the drywall and cursed.
"Shit." I stood there staring at the hole I'd made. The drywall had crumbled around the bolt, leaving a gap the size of my fist.
I knew how to fix it. I'd done the same thing to a hallway wall at the school. Went to the hardware store and bought spackle and a putty knife and sandpaper. Came back and filled the hole. The patch dried lumpy and uneven, so I sanded it down and tried again.
By the time I got the wall smooth, my hands were covered in white dust and my shoulders ached. I looked at the shelves still bolted to the other wall and wanted to put my fist through them.
The furniture went next. A sleek modern crib, all sharp geometric lines.
A white dresser with hard edges. The cream rug with its leaf pattern.
The white linen curtains. I hauled it all out to the garage and stacked it against the wall where I wouldn't have to look at it.
My back hurt from lifting the crib. I didn't care.
"It's not what I wanted," Hannah had said quietly.
Then I painted over the gray walls.
"Primer first," I muttered, prying the lid off the can. "I learned that much at the school."
But the gray was darker than any wall I'd covered there. It showed through the primer, every brushstroke, every uneven patch where I'd fixed the drywall. I stood in the middle of the nursery with a roller in my hand and looked at the streaky mess I'd made of the first wall.
"Jesus Christ."
I went back to the store. The guy behind the counter took one look at the can I'd carried in and shook his head.
"You need a second coat of primer over that gray," he said.
"Yeah. I figured."
He sold me the rest of it. Painter's tape. Drop cloths. A better roller. I bought it all and went home and started over.
It took four coats to cover Sienna's gray with Hannah's soft green. My shoulders burned. I got paint in my hair. I didn't stop until the walls were the color Hannah had chosen, the exact shade from the swatch she'd taped to her planning papers.
I kept working.
The work was slow because building something from nothing was new to me.
Every step took longer than I thought it would.
Measuring twice and cutting once still left me with boards that didn't fit right.
I had to pull out nails and start over. I drilled holes in the wrong place and had to patch them and drill again.
Hannah's papers sat on the floor where I could see them.
I checked them every few minutes. She'd written the measurements for the bookshelf three times in different places, like she wanted to be sure she got it right.
She'd noted which wall got the morning light.
She'd drawn a little star next to the corner where she wanted the rocking chair.
I built the bookshelf from scratch because I couldn't find one that matched her sketch.
It took me six days. The first attempt collapsed when I tried to stand it up. The boards I'd cut weren't the same length, and the whole thing tipped sideways and fell apart in my hands.
"Goddammit." I stood there looking at the pieces scattered across the floor. Picked one up. Set it down. Walked out of the room before I said something worse.
The second attempt wobbled. I'd gotten the measurements right that time, but I hadn't braced the joints properly. It stood up, but it leaned to one side, and when I pushed on it the whole thing shifted.
I tore it apart and started again.
The third one finally stood square and level.
I bolted it to the wall and loaded it with the books Hannah had picked out months ago, the ones I'd found still boxed up in the closet.
Board books with bright covers. Picture books about animals and families.
A teacher's choices, made for a child she hadn't met yet.
I gave the nursery every hour I wasn't at the school.
I went in at dawn and worked until my hands were too sore to grip the drill.
I went in after spending the afternoon in Julia's classroom, and I stayed until it was too dark to see what I was doing.
I installed lights. I sanded the trim. I caulked the baseboards.
I measured and remeasured the space for the reading corner, checking it against Hannah's sketch until I was sure I had it right.
My phone rang while I was on my knees caulking the trim. I looked at the screen. Carter.
I answered. "Yeah."
"We got the contract back from the Singapore office," Carter said. "They want to renegotiate the third quarter terms."
"So renegotiate."
"Pierce, this is a twelve-million-dollar deal. You sure you don't want to look at it first?"
I sat back on my heels and looked at the trim I'd just finished. It was crooked. I was going to have to pull it off and start over.
"I'm sure," I said. "You've got this."
Carter was quiet for a second. Then he said, "You doing okay?"
"I'm fine."
"You haven't been in the office in six weeks."
"I know."
"You want to tell me what you're doing?"
"No."
Another pause. Longer this time. Then Carter sighed. "All right. I'll handle Singapore."
"Thanks." I hung up before he could say anything else.
I wasn't running my own company anymore. Carter was. I was pulling off crooked trim and cutting new pieces and trying to get the angle right, and that was all I could handle.
It cost me my pride to do work I was bad at. Every cut that didn't line up. Every board that split when I drove the nail in too hard. Every time I had to pull out my phone and search for instructions on something a contractor would've finished in twenty minutes.
I didn't ask anyone for help. If I called someone in, they'd do it right the first time, and it would be their work, not mine. This had to be mine. I owed Hannah that much. I owed her a room that came from her plans, built by the man who should've been listening to her all along.
Nobody knew what I was doing. I didn't tell Carter. I didn't tell anyone at the school. I came home and I worked in the nursery and I kept my mouth shut about it.
It was the middle of the week when I realized I hadn't checked my email in two days. There were sixty unread messages. I skimmed the subject lines and closed the app. None of it mattered. Carter had it handled, and if he didn't, I'd hear about it.
The divorce was still moving forward. I'd gotten another email from my lawyer asking if I wanted to push back on the timeline Hannah had requested. I didn't answer. Let her set the pace. Let her decide when it was final. I wasn't going to fight her on it.
I went back to the nursery and painted the trim.
The ring was in my pocket. I carried it everywhere now. Hannah's wedding ring, the one she'd left on the nursery shelf next to the gray elephant. I could feel the weight of it every time I moved. Some days I took it out and looked at it. Most days I just left it where it was.
I could've used it to ask her to come back. I could've shown up at Julia's place and held it out and told her I understood now, told her I'd seen what I'd done wrong, told her I was different.
I wasn't going to do that. The ring was Hannah's.
She'd left it behind because I'd made her feel like the marriage was something she had to walk away from.
If I wanted her back—and God, I did—I had to be worth coming back to first. I had to fix what I'd broken before I had any right to ask her for another chance.
So I kept the ring, and I kept working, and I didn't use the one to beg for the other.
The room was changing. I could see it happening in pieces.
The soft green paint on the walls. The bookshelf I'd built, low enough for a child to reach, stocked with the board books and picture books she'd chosen.
The reading corner with its floor cushions.
The rocking chair I'd ordered from the link she'd written down.
It didn't look like Sienna's showroom anymore. It looked like a place where someone would sit on the floor and read to a baby. It looked like a teacher had planned it, someone who knew how to make a room where a child could learn and grow and feel safe.
It looked like Hannah's room.
I worked on it for another week. I hung curtains, and I had to rehang them twice because I put the rod up crooked the first time.
I assembled the crib she'd picked out, the one with rounded edges and a drawer underneath for storage.
The instructions were in three languages and none of them made sense, so I laid out all the pieces on the floor and figured it out by trial and error.
I installed a dimmer on the light switch because her notes said the overhead light was too harsh.
Every piece of it came from her plans. Every measurement. Every color. Every choice.
When I finished the last of it, I stood in the doorway and looked at what I'd built.
The room was quiet. The light coming through the curtains was soft.
Everything in it was exactly where Hannah had wanted it.
The bookshelf with the books arranged spines out.
The reading corner with its cushions in morning light.
The crib with the mobile she'd picked, the one with stars and moons.
The rocking chair in the corner she'd marked with a star.
I hadn't told anyone what I'd done. Carter didn't know. The people at the school didn't know. Hannah didn't know. Nobody knew I'd spent three weeks tearing out one nursery and building another, and I wasn't going to tell them.
This wasn't something I got credit for. This wasn't a deal I closed or a contract I won. This was the room my wife had asked for, the one I should've given her the first time she showed me the plans.
I walked into the nursery and sat down in the rocking chair. It faced the bookshelf and the reading corner. I could see the whole room from here. Hannah's room, built the way she'd wanted it, finished too late for her to know about it.
The light coming through the curtains shifted as the sun moved. The room went softer. The green on the walls looked the way it must've looked in Hannah's head when she chose the color. Warm. Gentle. A place made ready for a child.
I stayed there until the light changed and the room went dim, and I didn't get up.