FOUR
HANNAH
“Why is Lauren sitting at my table?”
Daniel did not answer. The music behind him kept playing, piano and low drums beneath the noise of the restaurant.
“Hannah, where are you?”
“At the hospital. Why is she at our anniversary dinner?”
“I can explain.”
“Then do it.”
I stood near the dark window at the end of the cardiac floor. My reflection floated over the parking lot outside: wrinkled shirt, hair pulled back, the visitor badge clipped crookedly to my waistband. Dad’s room was twelve doors behind me.
Daniel exhaled. “Lauren’s divorce became final yesterday. She was a mess. I was already coming here, and the reservation was paid for.”
“So you bought her a ticket.”
“She needed to get out of town.”
“When did you decide that?”
“Last night. After she texted.”
The message had appeared seconds after I told him no one could take my place. I remembered the light from his screen across the vinyl chair, his silence when he read it.
“You called her after I went back into Dad’s room.”
“I checked on her. She was alone, Hannah. Her marriage officially ended, and she had nobody there.”
“You told her about the trip.”
“She already knew we were going away.”
“Did she know it was our anniversary trip?”
His delay answered first.
“She knew you planned it for us,” he said. “She also knew you weren’t coming.”
I tightened my grip on the phone. “Did you tell her why?”
“I said your dad was in the hospital.”
“Did you tell her I asked you to cancel? That I said no one else could go?”
“That conversation was between you and me.”
“So she knew enough to sit in my place, but not enough to feel bad about it.”
“Don’t put this all on Lauren. I invited her.”
“And you booked her a room.”
“A separate room.” His answer came quickly now. “We’re on different floors. We haven’t kissed. I haven’t touched her.”
I pressed the heel of my hand against the cold glass. “I didn’t ask if you slept with her.”
“The picture makes this look like something it isn’t.”
“It looks like my husband took another woman on the anniversary trip I planned for us.”
“She was having a terrible weekend. You know what the last year has been like for her.”
“I know what the last two days have been like for me.”
“Your dad is okay.”
I turned from the window. A nurse rolled a medication cart out of Dad’s room and pulled the door almost closed behind her. “He had a stent put in his heart yesterday.”
“And you said the procedure went well.”
“That doesn’t make any of this okay.”
“I didn’t say it did.”
“Then why are you still there?”
The restaurant noise faded. He had moved somewhere quieter, perhaps the terrace, the one I had chosen because he once told me he could listen to the ocean for hours.
“I don’t know what you want me to say. Lauren has her own room. We had dinner.”
“At the table where you proposed to me.”
“Yes, I know which table it is.”
“Do you remember what you said there?”
“Hannah.”
“Do you?”
“I remember proposing.”
I closed my eyes. Fifteen years earlier, his hands had shaken when he opened the ring box. He had laughed once, nervously, before he asked me to marry him. I remembered every word. He remembered the category of the event.
“That reservation wasn’t dinner,” I said. “It was the reason for the trip.”
“It’s a table.”
I opened my eyes.
He continued before I could answer. “A specific table in a restaurant, Hannah. The dessert came with the reservation. I didn’t ask them to write anything new.”
“You let them put it in front of her.”
“What was I supposed to do, make a scene with the server?”
“You were supposed to leave the chair empty.”
Nothing came back at first.
“I told you this trip was about choosing our marriage,” I said. My voice had started to shake. I lowered it, trying to keep the sound from carrying down the corridor. “Then I told you to cancel. I told you no one could take my place. You heard every word, and you took Lauren anyway.”
“She isn’t taking your place.”
“She’s in it. I can see her.”
“You’re twisting this because of a photograph.”
“The photograph is public.”
“The hotel posted it. I didn’t.”
“You sat there.”
“I didn’t know they were going to put us online.”
“Lauren did. She shared it.”
He swore under his breath. “I’ll tell her to delete it.”
“That won’t change the picture.”
“What do you want from me right now?”
“Leave the restaurant.”
“Fine. We’re almost done anyway.”
“No. Leave the hotel. Come home.”
His breathing changed against the phone. “Tonight?”
“Now. If there isn’t a flight, take the first one in the morning.”
“Hannah, listen. I’ll look at flights, but I can’t walk out this second. Lauren is here without a car.”
“She can get a cab.”
“To where?”
“Her separate room.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Make it sound dirty. I told you nothing happened.”
“You keep answering a question I haven’t asked.”
“Because apparently fifteen years of marriage means you think I’d sleep with someone else the minute you’re not here.”
“I think you gave her my flight, my hotel, my dinner, and the table where you asked me to be your wife.”
My last word broke. I put my fist against my mouth, but a sound escaped anyway.
Daniel’s anger vanished for one beat. “Hannah?”
I gripped the paper edge of my visitor badge and pulled until the clip came loose from my waistband.
“Come home,” I said.
“Hey. Breathe for a second.”
“Come home.”
“I said I’ll check the flights.”
“Say you’re leaving.”
“I can’t promise a flight I haven’t found.”
“Say you are leaving the hotel.”
“And go where?” The irritation came back into his voice. “Stand at the airport all night? Leave Lauren here by herself when the whole reason she came was that she couldn’t be alone?”
I slid down the wall until I was sitting on the floor. The visitor badge bent in my hand. “You are still choosing her while I’m asking you to stop.”
“I’m trying to deal with the situation that actually exists.”
“I exist.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Then come back.”
“You couldn’t come, Hannah. Was I supposed to waste the entire vacation too?”
The words landed cleanly. No bad connection, no restaurant noise over them, no chance I had heard something else.
Daniel said my name.
I ended the call.
For several seconds I sat on the hospital floor with the phone in one hand and the crushed visitor badge in the other. The screen lit again before it went dark.
Daniel.
I declined the call.
He called again. Then a third time. Messages began arriving beneath his name.
That came out wrong.
Please answer.
I didn’t mean the whole trip. I meant the reservations.
I silenced the phone and stood. My knees felt unreliable, but the medication cart was coming back down the corridor and I did not want the nurse to find me on the floor.
In the restroom, I washed my face with water from the automatic faucet. The paper towels left soft white lint beneath my eyes. I took one from the dispenser and flattened the visitor badge against the counter, smoothing the crease over my name with my thumbnail.
The woman in the mirror belonged in the building: loose hair, gray skin, the badge clipped crooked to her waistband. I fixed the badge and returned to Dad’s room.
He was awake.
“Everything all right?” he asked.
The answer I had given him for years rose automatically. I set his water where he could reach it and checked the line of pills waiting in their paper cup.
“No,” I said.
Dad studied my face. He did not ask another question. He moved his hand across the blanket until it rested near mine, palm up. I put my fingers in it.
We sat that way until his eyes closed again.
The room settled around the low mechanical sounds of the monitor. Dad’s clothes were folded in the cabinet beside the window. His watch and wallet sat in a plastic hospital bag with his name printed across the label. Every item had a place because I had put it there.
At home, my things were mixed through fifteen years of Daniel’s.
My winter coats hung beside his in the hall closet.
My passport was in the fireproof box under both our names.
Half the books on the bedroom shelves were mine; I would have to stand there and remember which.
I had bought the sheets, chosen the dishes, saved Grace’s school forms in the second kitchen drawer.
Leaving would require more than a suitcase.
I had packed one of those for Daniel three nights ago.
His blue shirt was inside it. His jacket hung on the chair beside Lauren. The cream envelope was still in my bag, its edges softened from two days of being carried through the hospital.
My father slept beneath a hospital blanket. At home, the laundry basket would be where I had left it. Daniel’s coffee cup would be in the dishwasher. The sheets would still dip where I had reached for him the last night we shared the bed.
I pictured a row of open boxes against the bedroom wall.
Daniel’s messages kept arriving without sound.
I did not open them. When the night nurse came in, I listened while she reviewed Dad’s morning labs and the cardiologist’s plan to decide on discharge after rounds.
I wrote the details on the folder. I checked that the pharmacy had the right insurance information.
I answered Grace’s text about whether Grandpa could have visitors the next day.
Then I walked back to the waiting area and called my sister.
She answered on the first ring. “Is Dad okay?”
“He’s stable. They may discharge him tomorrow.”
“What’s wrong?”
I looked down at the visitor badge, its bent corner lifting away from my clothes.
“Tomorrow, help me get some boxes.”