Chapter 8 #3
She says yes, and she puts her head back down on my shoulder, and I close my eyes, and for one long held breath I let myself believe I am going to get to keep this.
And then the phone rings.
It is not my phone.
It is hers.
She left it in the cardigan pocket. The cardigan is on the chair. The phone buzzes against the wood and she lifts her head and she frowns and she says, "It's early."
She gets up. She pulls the wool blanket around her shoulders.
She crosses the room on her bare feet to the chair and she takes the phone out of the cardigan and she looks at the screen and her face does the small careful thing it does when she is reading something she does not want to read, and she sits down slowly on the edge of the chair with the blanket around her, and she says, very quietly, "It's the library board chair. "
I sit up.
I do not say anything.
She answers.
She says her name. She listens. She listens for a long time.
She does not say anything for almost a full minute.
I can hear the voice on the other end — a woman's voice, careful, slow, the voice of someone delivering bad news to someone she likes — and I watch Nora's face go from frowning to careful to very still, and her hand on the phone goes white at the knuckle, and she says, finally, "I see. When did this come in."
She listens.
She says, "Who delivered it."
She listens.
She says, "Thank you for calling me before the meeting. Yes. I'll be there. Yes. Thank you."
She hangs up.
She does not look at me right away. She sits on the edge of the chair with the blanket around her shoulders and the phone in her lap and she looks at the floor between her feet, and I sit on the edge of the bed in the gold morning light and I wait, because she has not asked me to come over yet, and I am learning how to wait until she asks.
She says, "Pauline filed."
I say, "Filed what."
She says, "A petition. For conservatorship. Yesterday afternoon, in Richmond. The library board chair got served with a copy this morning because I list the library as my employer on my tax filings and they're required to be informed when an employee is named in a competency action."
She says it level.
She says it the way she said I love you — level, without the stutter, without flinching, the words laid down one after another on the floor between us like stones.
I do not move.
I do not move because if I move it will be in the direction of the door and the truck and the road to Richmond and Graham Forsythe's front porch, and I have promised her — I have promised myself, in the cedar garden under the wisteria last night, with her palm against my cheek and her tracing my heart line — I have promised that I am not going to be the weapon anymore.
I sit on the edge of the bed and I put my hands flat on my own knees and I breathe in once, slow, and I breathe out, slow, and I unclench my jaw on purpose, and I say, "Okay."
She looks up at me.
Her eyes are wet but she is not crying.
She says, "Okay?"
I say, "Tell me what you need."
She blinks.
She blinks like the sentence I just said was not the sentence she expected.
She expected I will handle it. She expected I will go to Richmond.
She expected give me his address. That is the sentence the man I was three months ago would have said.
The man who put Grady through drywall. The man who held Graham Forsythe's wrist in the library doorway and counted his fingers in his head.
I am asking her what she needs.
She does not answer right away. She looks at me for a long second across the gold morning light.
Then she gets up. She crosses the room with the wool blanket around her shoulders and she sits down next to me on the edge of the bed and she puts her head against my shoulder and she takes a long breath that shakes a little going in but does not shake going out, and she says, "I need a lawyer.
I need one today. I need to be on a phone with someone good before five p.m. Eastern. "
I say, "Okay."
She says, "I need the library board to know I am not going anywhere. I need to be at that board meeting on Thursday in person and I need to say so in front of all nine of them."
I say, "Okay."
She says, "I need Pauline to not get within a hundred feet of me until this is over."
She says it and then she stops. She takes a breath. She says, "And I need you to not go to Richmond."
I close my eyes.
I close my eyes because it is the hardest thing she has ever asked me.
I say, "I won't."
She says, "Promise me."
I say, "I promise."
I open my eyes. I take her face in both my hands the way I took it last night under the fairy lights and the way I took it ten minutes ago in this bed, and I make her look at me, and I say it again so she can see it on my mouth.
I say, "I promise you. I am not going to Richmond. I am not going near him. I am not going to be that for you. I am going to be this."
I say it and I mean this — me, sitting on this bed, in this room, in this morning, with her face in my hands and my mouth two inches from her mouth, and not one fist clenched in my whole body.
She breathes out.
The breath shakes going out this time.
She says, "Okay."
She says, "Then will you come with me."
I say, "Yes."
She says, "All of it. The lawyer. The board meeting. The paperwork. The phone calls. I do not want to do any of it alone."
I say, "All of it."
She lets me hold her for a long minute against my shoulder.
Then she sits up. She wipes her eyes with the back of her wrist the way she does.
She straightens the blanket around her shoulders.
She says, "I am going to get dressed. Then we are going to the kitchen.
Then we are going to eat something because I have not eaten since yesterday afternoon and I cannot make hard decisions hungry.
Then I am going to call Briar because Briar's friend in Asheville does family law and she will know who to call.
And then we are going to sit down at the long table and we are going to start. "
She says all of it without the stutter.
She says all of it level.
She is the strongest person in the room.
I watch her get dressed in the gold morning light.
I watch her button the green dress up again, eight buttons, slow, her hands not shaking.
I watch her gather her hair up off her neck and twist it into the small knot she does when she means business.
I watch her find her sandals under the chair and put them on.
I watch her pick up the phone and put it back in the cardigan pocket and put the cardigan on over the green dress and turn back to me.
She holds out her hand.
I get up. I put on my jeans, my henley, my boots, my cut over the henley. I take her hand.
We go out into the hall.
In the kitchen, Knox is already at the long table with a notebook open in front of him and a pen in his hand and his coffee at his elbow, and Hawk is at the stove turning bacon, and Maverick is leaning against the counter with his arms folded, and Silas is at the door, and Diesel is on the phone with someone speaking low and steady, and Briar is on the bench by the window in her overalls with mud still on her knees from the flower shop because Knox went and got her, and Elara is at the end of the table with her tablet open and a list already started, and Wren has just walked in the back door with the diner's big coffee carafe in one hand and a stack of paper cups in the other and the librarian's board chair's home phone number written on a napkin under her thumb.
The whole room turns toward us when we come in.
Nora stops in the doorway with my hand in hers.
She looks at all of them.
She says, very small, very level, no stutter at all, "Thank you for coming."
Knox lifts his pen.
He says, "Sit down, Miss Ashby. Tell us what we're doing."
She sits down at the long table.
I sit down next to her.
I do not let go of her hand.
I do not clench my fist.
I am not the weapon in this room.
I am the man next to her, taking notes on the second page of Knox's notebook in my slow careful blocky hand, while my woman — my brave careful slow deliberate woman — tells a room full of people who love her exactly what she needs from each one of them, level, in order, without flinching, without stuttering, in the gold late-spring morning light coming through the kitchen window onto the long table, while Hawk slides a plate of bacon and eggs in front of her without asking and Briar pours her coffee and Knox writes down every word she says.
Outside, beyond the window, the thrush is still doing its three notes on the ridge.
The sun is fully up.
It is going to be a long day.
I am going to be here for all of it.
—
We are at the long table for four hours.