Chapter 5 #3
Ben pretended not to notice.
They sat on opposite ends of the bench and ate while the courtyard cooled around them.
The path was still unfinished, the fountain still half dismantled, the old lavender gone from one side, leaving bare earth where something new would eventually go.
From inside the studio came the distant sound of Allison locking cabinets and talking to someone on the phone.
Rachel unwrapped the sandwich carefully.
“Oh,” she said after the first bite.
“Good?”
“I forgot food does that.”
“What?”
“Makes people less insane.”
Ben smiled. “Underrated benefit.”
She took another bite and closed her eyes briefly, and he looked away because the expression felt private somehow. Not intimate. Just unguarded.
For a while they ate without saying much.
Ben had learned, over the years, that people often talked if you gave them enough room and often stopped if you looked too eager to hear. Rachel did neither for several minutes. She ate, sipped iced tea, and watched the maple leaves move against the darkening sky.
Finally she said, “I thought I was handling everything better.”
Ben folded the paper from his sandwich into a smaller square.
“Maybe you are.”
She looked over.
He shrugged. “Doesn’t mean it won’t still be hard.”
Rachel was quiet.
Then she laughed softly. “You make that sound very simple.”
“It might be.”
“It isn’t.”
“No.” He smiled faintly. “Probably not.”
She looked back toward the courtyard. “I hate that the divorce changed things for my kids. And Grace misses before.”
He nodded.
“And I do too, which feels…” She paused, searching for the word, then abandoned the effort. “I don’t know what it feels like.”
Ben waited.
“I don’t want to go back,” she said, almost quickly, as though the clarification mattered.
“I didn’t think you did.”
Her face turned toward him.
The surprise there was small but visible.
“No?”
“No.”
“Why?”
He considered that. “You don’t talk like someone who wants to go back.”
Rachel looked down at the sandwich wrapper in her lap.
“Hm.”
He let the silence return.
After a moment she said, “Sometimes I think the hardest part is that it wasn’t awful.”
Ben nodded.
She glanced at him. “Most people don’t know what to do with that.”
“No.”
“They want a reason.”
“People like reasons.”
“They really do.” She smiled faintly. “Villains too.”
“Those help.”
“They do.”
Her smile faded. “My ex. Robert. He’s not a villain.”
He had heard the name once from Allison, mentioned in passing with no drama attached.
“No,” he said.
“And I’m not either.”
The sentence came out so softly he almost missed it.
He looked down at his hands, at the faint dirt still caught near one thumbnail despite washing. There were many things he could have said. He chose none of them.
Rachel took a careful breath.
“I know that,” she added.
He nodded.
Outside the gate, headlights moved briefly across the street and disappeared. Somewhere inside, Allison called goodbye to someone.
Rachel laughed once, quietly, without much humor. “I keep saying that.”
“What?”
“I know.”
He looked at her.
“I know Robert’s good. I know Grace is allowed to miss things. I know I’m allowed to want a different life. I know all of it.”
She folded the sandwich paper over itself.
“Knowing doesn’t seem to be doing as much as advertised.”
Ben smiled a little. “No. It doesn’t always.”
She looked relieved that he hadn’t tried to improve on that.
They finished eating as the last light faded from the courtyard. When Rachel stood, she gathered the wrappers automatically, along with his empty iced tea and the napkin he’d set beside him.
Ben reached over and took them from her hand.
“I’ve got it.”
“Oh, no, I can—”
“I know.”
She stopped.
He smiled. “You’ve had a day. Let me throw away trash.”
That got a real laugh from her, fuller this time, and something in Ben eased at the sound.
“Fine,” she said. “But only because you made a compelling argument.”
“I thought so.”
He took the wrappers inside and dropped them in the bin near reception. When he returned, Rachel was standing near the unfinished path, looking out at the courtyard.
“It already feels different out here,” she said.
“Good different?”
“Yes.”
She turned toward him.
“Thank you.”
“For the courtyard?”
“For the sandwich.”
He nodded. “Anytime.”
The word left his mouth before he had weighed it, and for once Rachel didn’t rush to soften or deflect it. She simply looked at him for a moment, then nodded too.
Ben picked up his tool bucket near the gate.
“I’ll finish the pump tomorrow.”
“Of course.”
“And the path.”
“Good.”
“You should go home.”
She smiled. “That sounded like an instruction.”
“Observation.”
“Mm.”
But she gathered her bag from inside and walked with him toward the parking lot, locking the side door behind them. Allison had already left. The street was quiet, the sky deep blue above the low rooftops, and the air smelled faintly of dust and rosemary.
Rachel paused beside her car.
“Ben?”
He turned.
“Yeah?”
“I’m sorry I was strange earlier.”
There it was again.
He adjusted the bucket in his hand.
“You weren’t.”
She looked at him as if she might argue.
He waited.
After a second, she smiled.
“Okay.”
It seemed to cost her something not to explain.
He liked that she managed it anyway.
“Goodnight, Rachel.”
“Goodnight.”
She got into her car, and he stood beside his truck until she pulled out of the lot.
At home later, while washing soil from his hands, Ben found himself thinking about the way she’d said, And I’m not either.
Not a question.
Not exactly.
More like something she had been repeating to herself for a long time, hoping eventually it would become solid.
He dried his hands, fed the cat, and took the basil from the windowsill to trim the dead leaves. The plant had gone thirsty. He’d noticed that morning and forgotten to water it before leaving.
“Sorry,” he said to it, then smiled because Rachel would probably approve of apologizing to plants.
The house was quiet around him.
He watered the basil, set it back in the window, and stood there for a moment with the empty glass in his hand.
Rachel wanted a courtyard where other people could sit when the day had been too much.
Tonight, he had seen her nearly clean herself into disappearance because her daughter missed a life that no longer existed.
He didn’t know what Rachel carried.
He only knew it was heavier than she liked to admit.
And tomorrow, he thought, he would make sure the bench near the maple tree had shade by late afternoon.