39. Avery #2
The laugh presses at the back of my throat, but I refuse to give it room after the car-seat mistake taught me how quickly ordinary happiness can leave me frightened. I concentrate on the cereal until the moment passes. Declan sees the refusal and lets it stand.
“What about your work?” he asks. “Not the shooting or the case. The part you like.”
I stir the cereal long after it has gone soggy.
Before the affair, he knew the names of my difficult clients and almost none of the work I did for them.
I told myself he listened because he kissed my forehead and called me smarter than everybody at the club.
He admired my competence the way he admired a locked safe: useful, impressive, and better left unopened until he needed something inside.
“Bell gave me my own foreclosure-defense file,” I say.
“Not research for another attorney’s case.
Mine to run, with Bell signing whatever I build.
The lender filed the balance with two different fee totals, and the payment history includes charges from before my client owned the house. We may get the sale stopped.”
Declan goes after the detail instead of handing me the broad certainty he used when he had no idea what I did. “Which mistake matters more, the old charges or the totals?”
The question catches me. “Both, but the old charges are harder for them to explain. The totals could be a filing error. Charging her for inspections performed before closing means either their records are wrong or they rolled someone else’s debt into hers.
” I push the bowl aside, more awake now for a reason that has nothing to do with jasmine.
“If the judge orders the full servicing file, I can trace where it started.”
“Can they fix the paperwork and try again?” Declan asks, following the part that affects my client instead of offering praise he has not earned through attention.
“Possibly. My client owes the real balance, and I can’t make that disappear, but I can stop them from taking her house with numbers they can’t prove.” He understands because he listened to the details, not because he loves me. “Nadia says I get mean when a spreadsheet lies.”
“You always have.” His gaze drops to the bowl between us. “You found three fake charges on our wedding caterer’s bill and made the manager remove them while you were wearing your dress.”
“He charged us for a champagne fountain. We had beer in galvanized tubs and one bottle of whiskey Scanlan brought in his jacket.”
“You kept the dress on during the call.” His eyes remain on mine, but he remembers what happened after I hung up, and the heat in my face says I remember too.
“I paid too much for it to wear it only once.” I remember Declan standing behind me in our hotel room, unpinning my hair while I argued over the bill.
He kissed every place the dress exposed and whispered filthy promises while the manager transferred me between departments.
I won the dispute, then married sex and righteous anger so thoroughly in my mind that the sight of disputed charges turned me on for months.
Declan remembers too. I can tell by the way he moves his water glass farther from his body and refuses to look below my face.
Desire earns him nothing, but pretending it isn’t here would be another lie.
Two reasonable adults calmly discussing trust would have finished this conversation an hour ago.
I want him barefoot and smiling here. I also remember the blue toothbrush, and wanting him does not let me forget why he sleeps in the guest room.
“The baby needs a parent who understands spreadsheets,” he says after the memory has had time to hurt. “I’ll teach the useful things, like how to remove a door after losing an argument with it.”
“The baby won’t be touching a hinge pin until middle school.” I carry the bowl to the sink and rinse it. “And you’ll ask before teaching our child how to dismantle my house.”
“I’ll ask.” Declan finishes his water and washes only the glass he used, though my bowl sits beside it. “Do you want company until you go back to bed?”
The offer tempts me more than touch. I could sit across from him until dawn and borrow the comfort of being known without promising tomorrow, but keeping him because I am afraid to sleep would make the morning harder for me, not safer. “No. I’m going back now.”
He dries the glass and returns it to the cabinet I showed him. “I’ll stay in the guest room. Wake me if the weather alert changes or you need help.”
“Needing help doesn’t add a single room to your list.”
“Then I’ll wait outside whichever door you keep closed.” He walks back down the hall, pauses at the guest room, and looks toward me from the far end. “Good night, Avery.”
“Good night.” I switch off the kitchen light after his door closes. In the bedroom I put the pillow back between my knees, listen to the last of the rain come off the gutter, and fall asleep on my own side out of a habit I have stopped arguing with.
I wake after eight to sunlight pushing through the curtains and the baby objecting to the position of my bladder. The road alert has cleared. Declan’s truck is gone from beyond the gate, and panic arrives before reason because seeing the empty place where he was still hurts.
I walk to the guest room expecting a note, a gift, or one careful sentence arranged to make his leaving feel noble.
The bed is made. The wet towel hangs over the bathroom rack.
The toothbrush wrapper sits in the trash beside the brush he used and left behind.
He cleaned the sink, returned the cup to the cabinet, and touched nothing else. There is no note.
My office door remains closed. The nursery door remains closed.
When I open it, the crib waits as we left it, and the level mark he penciled beneath the frame is small enough that I have to kneel to find it.
Declan slept inside my house with every room he wanted around him, then left without stealing one look.
I can trust him to honor a closed door. The truth should calm me. Instead, it removes another excuse for avoiding what I have not asked since the full disclosure: not what he did, because he finally told me all of it, but what the affair gave him that our marriage did not.
I take my phone into the nursery and sit in the rocking chair beside the crib. Declan’s last message is a road update sent before dawn: Creek route opened. I left through the front door and locked it. No emotion hidden beneath the facts. No request for another night.
I type before I can spend the day punishing myself for wanting an answer.
Hawthorn Park, shelter three, tomorrow at two. There are questions I didn’t ask during disclosure. You answer them there, and we leave from there, separately.
His reply arrives in the flat, evenly spaced phrasing his dictation gives him, while the baby rolls beneath my hand.
I’ll be there. I’ll answer everything. I won’t follow you when it ends.
I read it twice, then sit with the phone face-down on the arm of the rocking chair while the sun moves the shadow of the crib rails all the way across the wall, and I build the list of questions in my head, in order, the way I would build an exhibit index.