CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Nadine slept with one hand fisted in the front of my sweatshirt.
I noticed at two in the morning when my left leg went numb.
I noticed again at four when the heat shut off and the room cooled enough for her to pull closer without waking.
By six, I had accepted that moving would be a mistake.
Her waking was not what kept me there. I did not want to break the moment.
The house had held women before. Dates. A relationship that lasted long enough for a toothbrush to become a drawer, then a key, then a conversation I kept postponing.
None of them had slept on my chest after crying over another man and made me feel trusted instead of compared. That was dangerous information. At six thirty, Nadine opened her eyes. For one second, she looked confused. Then memory returned, followed closely by embarrassment.
She lifted her head. “Did I sleep here all night?”
“Yes.”
“On you?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you move me?”
“You were holding my shirt.”
She looked down at her hand and released it.
“I was not.”
“You were.”
“You could’ve gone to sleep in your bed.”
“I did sleep.”
“You’re a damn liar.”
“My right side slept.”
Her mouth twitched. “Your leg numb?”
“Completely.”
“Serves you right for having a sofa built for decoration.”
“It’s nine feet long.”
“It’s still shaped like punishment.”
She sat up, wiped beneath her eyes, and looked toward the windows. Early light showed the dried mascara at one corner of her face and the crease from my sweatshirt against her cheek. She looked better to me than she had in the red dress. That was worse information.
“You hungry?” I asked.
“No.”
“Coffee?”
“Yes.”
I stood carefully. Blood returned to my leg in sharp, unpleasant waves. Nadine watched me limp toward the kitchen.
“You okay?”
“No.”
She laughed, low and rough from sleep. The sound followed me.
I made coffee and toast. She accepted both after claiming she did not want food.
She sat at the kitchen island in my sweatshirt because her blouse had wrinkled beneath her coat and because I had not offered one of the T-shirts I wore to job sites.
The sweatshirt hung past her hips. I had to remind myself she was upset, tired, and here because she needed somewhere to land. She caught me looking.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“That is a lie.”
“I like my sweatshirt.”
“On me?”
“Yes.”
Her eyes warmed, but she lifted the coffee instead of answering. My phone rang on the counter. Milan.
I answered. “Morning.”
“You home?”
“Yes.”
“I’m dropping the stair-rail sample off before lunch with Mom.”
I looked at the time. “Now?”
“I’m on your street.”
Nadine froze with the mug halfway to her mouth.
I covered the phone. “Milan is outside.”
Her eyes widened. “Why?”
“Work.”
“At seven in the morning?”
“She has lunch.”
“With who?”
“Her mother.”
“That is not the important part.”
Milan said through the phone, “Why are you whispering?”
“I’m not.”
“You are. Is somebody there?”
Nadine set down the mug. “Tell her no.”
I looked at her.
She grimaced. “That sounded bad. Don’t lie to your child.”
“She’s at the door.”
The bell rang. Milan had her own key, but she used it only when I did not answer. The fact that she waited told me she had already seen Nadine’s SUV in front of the house.
Nadine looked down at the sweatshirt. “I am forty-four years old. Why do I feel like I got caught?”
“Because you’re wearing my clothes.”
“That is not helping.”
I opened the door. Milan stood on the porch holding a long wrapped piece of wood and a coffee tray. Her gaze moved past me to Nadine at the kitchen island. She did not smile immediately. That restraint told me she had planned the expression.
“Morning,” she said.
Nadine lifted one hand. “Nothing happened.”
Milan’s control failed. She laughed so hard she had to rest the stair sample against the wall. I took the coffee tray from her before it dropped.
Nadine covered her face. “I hate both of y’all.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Milan said.
“You didn’t have to.”
Milan stepped inside and hugged her. “You look cute.”
“I cried until I fell asleep on your father.”
“That is less cute, but still intimate.”
“Milan.”
She looked at me. “What? I’m being grown.”
“Go to lunch.”
“I brought the rail sample.”
She unwrapped a section of walnut with a profile cut to match the original stair handrail.
The old rail was sound in most places, but three sections had been damaged during a renovation decades earlier.
We had been trying to source wood with the same grain density and color.
Nadine came closer, still wearing my sweatshirt.
“This is the replacement?” she asked.
“Salvaged walnut from a school outside Lancaster,” Milan said. “Same period. We can mill it to match without replacing the entire rail.”
Nadine ran her fingers over the wood. “It already has marks.”
“That’s why it works,” I said. “New wood would stand out.”
She looked at me. “You’re keeping the old damage?”
“We’re repairing what failed. The rest has held for almost a century.”
Milan glanced between us and picked up her purse. “I’m going to leave before the metaphor gets too obvious.”
“There was no metaphor,” I said.
“Sure.”
Nadine laughed.
Milan hugged me with one arm. “Mom said eleven, not eleven-ish.”
“I remember.”
“You’re still coming?”
“Yes.”
She looked at Nadine. “You should come sometime. Mom is nosy, but she cooks.”
Nadine’s face changed slightly.
Milan saw it and corrected herself. “Not today. I didn’t mean today. I meant later. When nobody looks like they slept in a hostage situation.”
“I did not sleep in a hostage situation,” Nadine said.
“Dad’s sofa says otherwise.”
Then she left before I could put her out. Nadine watched through the front window until Milan reached her car.
“You have lunch with your ex-wife?”
“With Milan and her mother.”
“That is brunch with your ex-wife.”
“Yes.”
“How often?”
“Birthdays. Holidays. Sometimes when Milan has something to tell both of us and refuses to repeat herself.”
Nadine folded her arms. “Y’all get along?”
“Now.”
“What does now mean?”
“It means we can share a meal without turning fourteen years of marriage into a courtroom exhibit.”
“Does she know you date?”
“Yes.”
“Does she care?”
“Not in the way you’re asking.”
Nadine picked up her coffee, then put it down again without drinking.
I leaned against the island. “Ask what you want.”
“Does she still have access to you?”
The question was direct but not simple.
“She can call. She knows where I live. She’s Milan’s mother.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“I know.”
Her eyes narrowed. “You use that sentence too much.”
“Then be more specific.”
She took a breath. “If she decided she wanted you back, would that door still be there?”
“No.”
The answer came clean. Nadine watched me.
“My marriage ended eleven years ago,” I said. “I’m not angry with Jacinda. I don’t want her back. Those are separate things.”
“Jacinda.”
“Yes.”
“That is a pretty name.”
“It was her name before I met her.”
Nadine gave me a look. “You are determined to make jealousy feel stupid.”
“I’m not trying to make you feel stupid.”
“I didn’t say I was jealous.”
“You asked if she could have me.”
“I asked if the door was open.”
“It isn’t.”
She looked down at the rail sample. I waited until she chose her next words.
“What about the woman you dated for three years?” she asked.
“She moved to D.C. She got married last summer.”
“Did you go?”
“No.”
“Were you invited?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you go?”
“Because we weren’t friends. We were two people who kept a relationship going after it stopped moving.”
“That sounds familiar.”
“Yes.”
Nadine’s fingers tightened around the edge of the counter. “I don’t want to be somebody you keep in a room.”
I felt the warning in the sentence.
She continued, “Dinner when you have time. My house because it’s convenient. Sex when it happens. Then you go back to your family meals and business and the parts of your life that are real.”
“We haven’t had sex.”
“That was not the point.”
“No.”
I stepped closer. She did not move away.
“I kept things separated before because I did not want another person to have enough access to disrupt me,” I said. “I called it independence. It was fear with a schedule.”
Nadine’s expression softened, but she did not let me off the hook.
“And now?”
“Now I know it does not work.”
“That is not the same as saying you won’t do it again.”
“No.”
She waited. I looked at the woman standing in my kitchen wearing my sweatshirt, still swollen around the eyes from crying over a family that had changed shape. She had not asked me to make promises the morning after a crisis. She had asked whether I understood my own pattern.
“I don’t want temporary with you,” I said.
Her breath caught, but she kept her face steady.
“What do you want?”
“To keep seeing you. To learn your life outside the renovation. To let you into mine without making you knock every time.”
“Don’t make it sound too good.”
“I’m not finished.”
She lifted one eyebrow.
“I’m going to get it wrong sometimes,” I said. “I still work too much. When I’m worried, I start organizing instead of talking. I’m used to making decisions alone. That did not disappear because I signed a disclosure form.”
“That sounds more believable.”
“I thought it might.”
Nadine touched the center of my sweatshirt where it rested against her chest. “I don’t know what the hell I want long-term.”
“I heard you the first time.”
“But I know I don’t want to be hidden.”
“You won’t be.”
“Don’t answer before you think.”
“I thought about it while my leg was dying.”
Her mouth curved. Then she leaned in and kissed me. It was not a crisis kiss. No tears. No parking garage. No unfinished job site. Just morning light, cold coffee, and a woman deciding to believe one answer without pretending it guaranteed the rest.
When she stepped back, she said, “You have lunch.”
“I do.”
“I have to go home and shower.”
“You can shower here.”
Her eyes moved toward the stairs. I felt the shift between us. So did she.
Nadine picked up her coat. “No.”
I nodded.
She studied my face. “You’re not gonna ask why?”
“You said no.”
“I’m trying to decide whether that stays attractive or becomes annoying.”
“Let me know.”
At the door, she turned back. “Friday.”
“Yes.”
“Your house this time.”
“Yes.”
“And do not cook salmon.”
“I make good salmon.”
“Milan says you make the same salmon four ways.”
“Milan talks too much.”
Nadine smiled. “I like her.”
“She likes you.”
“I noticed.”
She left wearing her wrinkled blouse beneath her coat and carrying my sweatshirt in a paper grocery bag because she refused to walk to her car in it.
I watched until she drove away. Then I looked at the salvaged rail sample on the table.
The original had survived because the strong sections were left alone and the damaged ones were repaired honestly.
I had spent years replacing whole parts of my life so I would not have to examine what failed.
That method had been clean. It had not been better.