Chapter 31 #3
The nanny took the guest room down the hall from theirs, on Kai’s side, near the children, where she had apparently gotten used to staying as well.
I stood in the doorway of a wing of my own house I’d entered for the first time today and watched my family settle into their routines around me, fluent in a domestic choreography I had no part in.
Once the kids were tucked in, I grabbed Amelie’s hand.
I refused to let it go. “Let’s go to sleep,” I spoke with confidence I didn’t feel.
I didn’t leave any space for her to reject the idea.
She had already admitted that Kai wasn’t here tonight, and the nanny was sleeping over to watch the kids.
There was nothing keeping her from spending the night with me.
I tried to take her over the threshold into my wing. At the dividing door, she slowed.
“I have to be up early for brunch,” she said, almost apologetic.
I held up my phone. “I texted Kai while you were putting the kids to bed. I let him know I was back, and I’ll make brunch tomorrow. There’s no reason for you to wake up early.” I had a feeling Mr. Homemaker didn’t let his personal chef do the cooking. I had to cook if I wanted to keep up with him.
Amelie was alarmed that I had messaged him. “You texted him? What did you say?” she asked far too quickly.
I frowned at the reaction. “Why is that so shocking?”
“I just meant… I didn’t realize he knew that you were back.” She caught the sentence before it could land anywhere and smoothed it over. “He’s okay with us staying together tonight?” she asked unsurely.
I stared at her blankly. How had it come to this? The only person my wife seemed concerned with was hundreds of miles away.
“Am, what’s the big deal if you stay with me?” I asked quietly. “You’re my wife, too. Kai knows that.”
“Right,” she agreed reluctantly, and I didn’t waste time leading her to our bedroom.
We passed the warm lamplight and the smell of cinnamon and old books, through the dividing door, and into my side, where the air cooled and went odorless and the lights were the clean, even white of a place no one had ever cried or laughed or lived in.
The crossing felt longer than it was, especially since she was obviously reluctant and only letting it happen because she couldn’t think of a way out. She still tried.
“Oh wait. I left my phone on the kitchen counter.” She turned around, ready to sprint back to the safety of Kai’s side. It was an excuse. Amelie left her phone around the house all the time and never thought twice about it.
“You don’t need it. Get it tomorrow.”
I didn’t give her the chance to run and power walked us upstairs with my hand tightly wrapped around her wrist. Some part of me knew exactly how this looked. I couldn’t stop. If I let go of her wrist, I was afraid I’d find out that nothing in this house would follow me anywhere on its own.
My bedroom waited upstairs, immaculate, the bed turned down by someone we paid. It looked like a room in a brochure for a life I was no longer living.
She came in without comment and stood for a moment, taking in a room that had been ours and was now just mine.
“Everything’s the same,” she stated.
I almost added, except for your clothes and everything else you moved to his side. “It’s good to be home.”
I crossed to her. I cupped the side of her face the way I had a thousand times, and I leaned in to kiss her, softly this time, asking, not taking.
She turned her face.
It wasn’t cruel. It was barely anything.
Just the smallest motion of her chin, my lips landing on her cheek instead, and a quiet that said everything more clearly than any word could have.
She slipped out from under my hand, climbed onto her side of the bed, and lay down on her back for the length of one breath before she rolled over and gave me her spine.
“Am,” I said to the back of her head.
“Mm.”
“I missed you. It scares me how much.”
For a moment, she was quiet, and I let myself believe the quiet was her deciding to turn over.
“You’ve been traveling all day,” she said softly. “Get some sleep.”
It was the kindest possible way to say I don’t feel the same way, and it was my own doing. She’d taken the reason I gave for needing her and made it the reason I should leave her be.
She pulled the blanket to her shoulders and went still. I turned off the lamp and lay down behind her.
For a while, I didn’t move, listening to her breathe.
Then I did the thing my body remembered before my mind could talk myself out of it, I shifted closer and curled around her back, fit my knees behind hers, slid my arm over her waist the way I had on a thousand nights in a house that no longer existed.
She let me. That was the worst of it. She didn’t pull away, nor did she pull me closer.
She used to reach back half asleep and drag my arm tighter across her, used to tuck her perpetually cold feet between my calves, and sigh as she’d finally arrived somewhere safe.
Tonight, she did none of it. She lay in the circle of my arm and simply allowed it, as if she were waiting patiently for it to be over.
Her body was warm and familiar and a thousand miles away from mine.
I held my wife for the first time in weeks.
I had never in my life felt farther away from her.