Chapter 31
Audrey
Felicity types in the passcode to the lockbox without looking at her phone.
She talks the whole time her hand works it—something about the family who built the deck, the family who hated the deck, then the family who finally tore the deck off after years of rotting—and the door swings open on a foyer that smells like fresh paint and someone else's life.
"Okay." She steps back and lets me go first. "Tell me everything you love and everything you hate. I won't take it personally.”
The ceilings go up two stories. There's a chandelier the size of Eli. My footsteps echo, hers as well, and the sound of the two of us crossing the marble sounds like a hotel lobby.
"It's big," I say.
"It's seven bedrooms." She says it like a brag and a question at the same time.
"It’s me and two kids." I tip my head up at the chandelier. "Who cleans that?"
"A man on a ladder who resents his job." She's already writing in her phone. "Too big. Got it. Next."
The next house is in Lakeshore, on a street where the trees meet in the middle of the road. The kitchen is the size of a coat closet. I open the oven, and it's one of those narrow ones, the kind that barely fits a standard sheet pan.
I stand in front of it and do the math. How many batches it would take to bake a simple, two-tiered cake for a birthday.
"No," I say.
"You haven't even seen the—"
"Lissy." I crouch and open the lower cabinets. There's nowhere to place a turntable, not enough space to stack the amount of cake pans I have. “How can I bake a wedding cake here?"
Her gaze flicks to one of the cabinets. Then back to me. Something behind her eyes clicks over, fast.
"You can’t," she says. "Yeah. No. Next."
The third one has the right kitchen. A long galley with counter space for days, and for a second I let myself want it. Then I look up the elementary school, see the statistics and reviews, and immediately change my mind. I show the screen to Felicity.
"School's wrong.”
"School's wrong," she agrees, and pulls back out without an argument, and I love that she didn’t make me explain.
The fourth one is in the Marina District. She slows the car before we reach it.
"I almost didn't show you this one." She parallel parks in a single, clean motion. "It's a little over your budget. But…"
"But what?"
She turns the car off and looks at me, steady, no jokes this time. "Just walk in. Don't decide anything in the driveway."
The porch is the first thing I notice. It runs the entire front of the house, wide enough for chairs and a bench, deep enough that the rain wouldn't reach you. There's an old swing bolted into the ceiling, the chain orange with rust. I put my hand on it, and it gives a soft complaining creak.
Inside, the light comes in long across the floor. Felicity stays by the door. She doesn’t say anything.
The kitchen stops me.
It's a galley too, but doubled, an island down the center and counters on both walls, a gap by the back window where a second oven would slot in perfectly. I set my purse on the island and run my fingers along the counter. Quartz, cool under my hand, no seam where the sink meets the run.
Out the window, the backyard is flat and fenced with big, established trees that would keep most of the yard shaded in the afternoon. I can see Eli out there climbing them, begging me to build the treehouse he’s always wanted.
I climb the stairs.
The bedroom at the end of the hall faces east. I stand in the doorway and already know whose room it is. Sophie’s. The corner could hold a reading chair where she can read in the warmth and natural light, the exact way she prefers.
I walk back to the kitchen.
Felicity is leaning in the doorway, arms crossed, not writing anything down. Just watching me.
"I like this one," I say.
"I know."
"Can I think about it? I have to look at the numbers, and I don't want to decide in one afternoon.” I've never gotten to think about something this big in my life.
She uncrosses her arms. Whatever she sees in my face, she doesn't make a joke about it.
"Of course," she says. "How’s Thursday?"
I bring him on Thursday.
Asher’s hand is at the small of my back, and we step through together, the porch swing creaking behind us in the wind.
"Take your time," Felicity shouts from the front yard. “I’ve gotta call a client back.”
Asher walks through the house slowly. He doesn't say anything for a long time, and I trail him, watching him touch things, open drawers, and look at the gap by the window. Where I told him a second oven could fit.
He sets both hands flat on the island and leans, looking at the window, the yard, the long counter.
"I see what you mean about adding another oven," he says.
"I know."
"You could make more cakes in less time. That’d be more sustainable for when you open your business."
“If,” I say, emphasizing the word. “I hardly know anyone in Harlow.”
“I’m sure people from Millbrook would provide testimonials. We could build you a website. That’d make things easier too.”
I don't answer that one. He lets it go, leaving it on the counter between us for later.
He moves to the back door and steps out, walking the fence line with his hands in his pockets, and halfway down the long side he stops.
"Here." He nudges the bottom of a board with his shoe. It swings loose from one nail and hangs there. The next one over is gone entirely, an open gap, and a third farther down is split down the grain. "And here. And that one's done."
"Is it bad?"
"It’s not too bad." He crouches, setting the loose board back into place, and holds it with two fingers. Then he stands, brushing his hand off on his jeans. "I'll put new boards up before Eli's out here. It should only take a weekend or two.”
He says it without weight. Like the fence is already his problem. Like he's already standing in the yard with a level and a box of screws, already here.
I look at him across the lawn.
“So you like it?” I ask.
“I think it’s a really good house. Especially for the three of you.”
"And you?"
He turns. The wind moves the grass between us. "And me what?"
"This house." My voice does something I don't plan. "It's right for me. It's right for the kids." I make myself hold his eyes. "But what about you?"
He doesn't answer. His mouth opens and nothing comes out, and for a man who always has a punchline, the silence is loud.
"I already asked Sophie and Eli." My throat tightens around it. "They looked at me like it was a stupid question. They just assumed you'd be coming too."
Something flashes across his face so fast it almost hurts to look at.
I keep going because if I stop, I'll lose it. "I know it's not as fancy as your penthouse. There's no doorman. No view. It’s not even a perfect house; the fence has holes in it and the swing is rusted. I know it’s a lot with two kids who get up at seven in the morning, and I can’t always—"
He crosses the yard.
He doesn't let me finish. His hand comes up to the back of my neck, and his mouth lands on mine, the rest of the sentence gone, swallowed, irrelevant.
I go up on my toes without thinking about it.
His other arm wraps low around my back and pulls me into him, all the way in, until there's no grass between us, no list left to read.
The kiss isn't soft. It's the kiss of a man answering a question he's been holding his breath on.
He tilts my head and goes deeper, and I make a sound against him I would be embarrassed by if I had any room left to be embarrassed.
My hands grip the front of his shirt. The wind moves.
The swing creaks. The world narrows to him.
Somewhere inside the house a door opens. Then the same door closes.
Neither of us stops. I feel him almost smile against my mouth, and then he keeps kissing me anyway, and Felicity and her client can wait in the house until next Thursday for all the attention either of us gives them.
When he finally pulls back, it's only an inch, his forehead dropping to mine. We're both breathing like we ran.
"You're the first person who ever really saw me." I say it against his mouth, quietly, just for him. "In ways I didn't think I could be seen. I don't want to be away from you anymore. Not in a different city, another house, day or night. I just want you.”
His hand slides up to hold one side of my face, his thumb moving once along my cheekbone.
"Same, doll face." His voice has gone rough at the edges. "I don't think anybody else could've ever known me. Really known me. The way you do." He swallows. "It had to be you. I've been sure of that for a while."
I smile into his palm. I can't help it.
"I don't care about the penthouse," he says. "I don't care about the doorman or the view. You could've picked a shack on the side of the road and I'd be standing in it. Anywhere you wanted to be.”
He takes both my hands off his shirt and holds them between us, against his chest, where I can feel his heart going.
"You are my home, Audrey." He says my name plain, no nickname, the way he does when he's completely serious. "You and everything you come with. Sophie. Eli. Migraines. Stripper costumes."
Heat climbs my face. "Asher."
"I'll take as much of you as you'll give me, Audrey.” He brings my knuckles to his mouth and holds them there for a second. “I love you."
The words wrap around me like a blanket I've slept under a hundred times.
Familiar.
Safe.
Mine.
My fingers tighten around his.
"I love you too."
He kisses me again, slower this time, and from the back of the house I hear Felicity shout, "I'm still here, by the way," and we don't stop for that either.
The Millbrook house is empty when we get to it.
The movers left an hour ago. Asher booked them, paying extra for the white-glove crew who wrap dishes like they're shipping art. He wouldn't let me carry so much as a lamp out to the truck. The house is bare now. Just walls.
He stops on the porch.
"I'll be right here." He squeezes my hand and lets go of it. "Take your time.”
I take the kids in alone.
It's strange how loud an empty house is. Our footsteps come back at us off the bare floor, off the walls I painted, the pale green in the living room I picked out eight months pregnant with Eli while Thomas held the swatches up one at a time and got every name wrong on purpose to make me laugh.
The corner by the window is bare. There's no chair in it. The one I nursed Sophie in at two in the morning, the one where she would read her books in the corner, is gone now.
The kids are quiet. Even Eli, who narrates breakfast, who has opinions about clouds, walks the hall without a single word, trailing his fingers along the wall as we climb the stairs.
Sophie touches the doorframes as she passes them. Grips each one softly, then takes them away. She doesn't look at me while she does it.
Eli stops in the doorway of his old room.
He moves to the middle of the empty floor, in the exact spot where his bed used to be, and turns a slow circle, looking at the space where his life used to be.
"This is where I was a kid," he says.
I stand beside him. "You're still a kid, buddy."
"Yeah." He frowns at the empty wall, working it out. "But this is where I was a little kid."
I don't have anything for that. I put my hand on the back of his head, and he leans into me for a second, the way he hasn't since he was four, and then he's done. He runs off, feet thundering down the stairs one last time.
I find the kitchen last.
Sophie's already there. She's standing where the table was, staring out the window, and the light comes in across the counter the way it has every afternoon for ten years.
She doesn't say anything for a long moment. I stand next to her and let her have the quiet.
"Mom?” she says eventually. “Dad would want us to be happy… right?"
The light is on the counter. The faucet drips, once, into the empty sink.
I open my mouth and nothing comes out. I nod instead, hard, because my voice has left me entirely, and I pull her into my side. I hold her there, my chin on the top of her head, and she lets me, which she doesn’t always let me anymore.
We stand in the kitchen until I can breathe.
Then I walk my kids out of the only house they've ever lived in, pull the front door shut behind us, and turn the key in the lock one last time. The deadbolt slides home with a sound I've heard ten thousand times.
I type in the passcode for the lockbox, set the keys inside, and close it.
Asher's at the bottom of the steps with Eli leaning into him. He doesn't say anything either. He just holds out his free hand, and I take it, and we go to the car.
When we arrive at the new house, I watch the kids tear up the porch steps and run through the front door. The swing on the porch creaks in the wind behind them. Eli is already yelling something about the yard. Sophie's voice answers him from inside, bright and unguarded.
Asher's at the trunk with the last box, the one I wouldn't let the movers take because it has the photo albums in it. He hefts it onto one shoulder and bumps the trunk closed with his other hand.
I've lived in two houses my whole life. My parents picked the first one. Then Thomas and I picked the second one with my mother in the room.
Nobody picked this one but me.
I stand in my driveway and soak it in.
Look at the man I also chose.
Asher stops beside me with the box on his shoulder. He looks at the open door, the kids, the lit-up windows of the house we’ll turn into a home. Then he looks at me, and that crooked grin comes up slow, the same one he gave me across a yard all those months ago when I had no idea what was coming.
"Welcome home, doll face."