Chapter 5
“I’m back. It was nothing,” Henry was saying now.
He hadn’t apologized for keeping her waiting, but his delay had given her time to talk to her team, so she let it go, their connection reassuring her.
“This house is always full of sounds. I guess we’re not used to them yet.
And the kids are fine. Zachary and Linnea were in an apocalyptic struggle over the rules of some game. I hope you’re in your room now.”
“Yeah, well. Turns out I was using the key from yesterday’s hotel.”
“You’re tired, hon. We’re good. Let’s say goodnight so you can sleep. Safe safe.”
“Love love.” She recited her part of their nightly call and response and paused. But Henry did not answer. “Hen? You there?”
Safe safe, love love, always always. How many times had they repeated that to each other?
They’d first said it, spontaneously, when Henry left her tiny apartment that day so many years ago, all makeshift bookshelves and Marimekko pillows and piles of New Yorker s, and headed to some sales conference in Montpelier.
The sales conference had been—disappointing.
But their nightly mantra became the bedrock of their relationship.
They’d whispered it to each other, the secret two of them, on their wedding day. And every night since.
But only once in their new home. Where she’d spent just one night before her book tour began.
All because of Henry.
After that first check from her publisher, Henry, euphoric, had promised her a surprise. Then a few days later, he’d driven them for miles, pulled up to the curb on an unfamiliar street, opened Tessa’s passenger-side door, and guided her onto a crushed-clamshell driveway.
“All this could be yours. See what I did there?” He’d pointed at a three-story buttercream Victorian, spackled and shadowed with the sunshine coming through lofty leafed-out maples.
Rows of windows with pristine white shutters faced them, and a bank of pink-and-white peonies lined the pillared front porch. “All you have to do is sign.”
“Sign what?” Turned out he had already put in an offer on the house.
It was absurd, him making this unilateral decision.
And, she’d calculated, the mortgage payments would devour her book money.
But she had to admit, after all those years cramped and budgeting in their tired split-level in suburban Boston, the seaside Rockport house felt like another step in their destiny.
The air here smelled of salt, and sun, and it felt like she could hear the ocean. She was either delighted or outraged.
“ You’ve made this happen, Tesser.” He’d led her up the steps to the porch, flats of aging white wood, the fading paint revealing the gray underneath.
“Selling the old house gives us the down payment, and then with my severance and your royalties? We’re good.
It needs some fixing, and the kitchen sucks.
But the rest is epic. You go on tour, sell a million books, the kids and I will survive. I promise.”
“You can’t do it on your own, honey,” she’d protested. “All the home stuff. Kid stuff.”
At that, Henry had crossed his arms over his chest, and given her a look.
“Gotcha,” he said. “So I take that to mean a man can’t do what a woman can?
I’d never say ‘you can’t do it on your own’ to you, Tessa.
Not if it was something you wanted to do.
Now I want to. I stay home, you go succeed, everyone wins.
You gonna double-standard me? What would Annabelle say? ”
She’d had to laugh. Henry had a point.
“And look.” Once inside, Henry had guided her through a warren of cozy rooms, two with fireplaces and pocket doors, and around a corner. “Ta- da . Your writing room.”
“A built-in window seat,” she’d whispered.
As if on cue, the sun had beamed through a multipaned window, casting stripes of light on the flowered cushions.
A dogwood—slick green leaves and a chaos of flowers—had bloomed like delicate fireworks in the yard beyond.
She’d fallen in love, in one beat of her heart, and her resistance had vanished.
It was lucky, ironically, that Henry now was once again “between jobs,” as he always put it, so he could stay home with the kids. Now, alone in her hotel room, her phone had gone silent. “Henry? You there?”
The distance between them yawned open again, she could almost feel the vast darkness.
Where had he gone now? Was something wrong with the kids?
It was impossible to know, it dawned on her, she could only see what he decided to show her on-screen.
Her view of her entire home life—in a house she’d only stayed in one night—was proscribed by Henry’s laptop angles.
His decisions about exactly what to show her. And what to hide?
“Hen?”
“I’m here.”
She tried to picture him, pushing up his tortoiseshell glasses, maybe wearing that ratty polo shirt she always threatened to toss away. She’d said love love , and he had one more line, and silly as it was, she couldn’t relax until he said it.
“Where were you? What’s going on?”
“Huh? Always always,” he said. “Now your turn.”
“Always always.” She said her own final line, from habit and from marital superstition, yearning to talk just a little longer, keep connected for another minute.
But Henry hung up, leaving her alone in another almost unsettlingly familiar place. The humming air conditioner, the plastic-wrapped TV remote, the elaborately folded white towels, and her suitcase, open on the folding stand. And strangers behind every door.
She shook it off. Life was good, even fabulous, her kids were individuals, curious, with agency and intent, and Henry, for all his foibles, was at least reliably and relentlessly optimistic. They were a good team. So far.
And now, finally, time for food. She yanked open the nightstand drawer, expecting a carryout menu. And stared at what was there instead.