Chapter 13 #2
After dinner, they sat on the porch with mugs of coffee while the lake darkened in front of them. The new lanterns cast warm pools of light along the railing. Across the water, a few houses glowed between the trees. Somewhere down the road, a dog barked twice and stopped.
Annie tucked her feet beneath her on the chair. “I saw Dr. Sloane today.”
Nathan glanced at her. Dr. Sloane was their actual therapist, recommended by no one connected to either of them, vetted by Annie, Tricia, Maggie, and Erin with a thoroughness that made the poor man’s receptionist audibly nervous. “How was it?”
“Hard.”
“Do you want to tell me?”
“Some of it.” Annie watched the lake move in the dark. “He asked what I was afraid of if I stayed.”
Nathan set his mug down and waited.
“I said I was afraid I would become the kind of woman who loses herself in a relationship that’s unhealthy.
I said I was afraid I would forgive you because leaving would be exhausting.
I said I was afraid that one day, five years from now, I’d hear Brooke’s voice in my head and wonder whether I chose my own life or just defended it until I was too tired to leave. ”
Nathan’s face tightened, but he did not interrupt.
“Then he asked what I was afraid of if I left,” Annie continued. “I said I was afraid Brooke would become the only person who got a future from this. Because she would have succeeded in making everything we built together unlivable.”
Nathan looked down at his hands. “And what did he say?”
“He said fear is not a good architect.” Annie stopped, caught the word, and grimaced. “No. Bad word. He said fear should not dictate our lives”
Nathan’s mouth moved like he wanted to smile but knew better.
Annie pointed at him. “Do not.”
“I am not.”
“You are internally amused.”
“I am privately fond.”
She looked back at the lake. “He asked what I wanted without fear.”
Nathan’s stillness changed.
Annie wrapped both hands around her mug.
“I said I wanted this house painted. I wanted my pantry back. I wanted Erin to call me without wondering what Brooke would think. I wanted Maggie to stop keeping paper towels ready because I cried in her kitchen. I wanted to ask you hard questions and have you answer without making me feel cruel for asking.”
“I will.”
“You won’t always do it well.”
“No.”
“But you’re doing it.”
“I’m trying.”
She looked at him then. “I also said I wanted my husband back.”
Nathan’s eyes closed. He did not speak for several seconds. When he opened them, his face was wet, and he did not hide it.
“I’m here,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m not asking you to be done being angry.”
“Good.”
“I’m not going to stop asking questions.”
“Okay.”
“I’m not asking you to pretend she didn’t change us.”
Annie studied him through the porch light. “She changed us. But she does not get to be the most important thing that ever happened to us.”
Nathan’s breath left him slowly.
Annie leaned back in the chair. “That’s the part I’m working on.”
They sat in silence after that, but it was not empty silence.
The kind of quiet that belonged to two people who were still there after the shouting, the lawyers, the evidence bags, the terrible clarity.
Two people who had not returned to where they began and maybe never would, which did not mean there was nowhere left to go.
Later, inside, Annie found Nathan standing in the living room, looking at the newly painted walls in the lamplight. The warm color had dried softer than expected. It made the room look less expensive and more lived in.
“Looks good” he said.
“It does, doesn’t it.”
He looked at her then, and this time she let him cross the room. He stopped in front of her, close enough that she could see the tiny fleck of paint still near his eyebrow.
“Guest room?” he asked.
Annie touched the ring on his hand, turning it once. “Not tonight.”
His breath caught.
She looked up. “Our room.”
Nathan did not move for a second. Then he nodded.
Upstairs, the bedroom was different because Annie had changed it. New sheets. New lamps. No cashmere throw Brooke had chosen. No framed foundation photo. The window was open slightly, letting in the smell of lake water and wet earth. Nathan stood near the door while Annie turned down the bed.
“You can stop hovering,” she said.
He gave a rough little laugh. “I don’t know how to do this without being careful.”
“Careful is fine. Frozen is annoying.”
“Understood.”
She went to him and lifted her face. He kissed her with care at first, then with feeling when she did not pull away.
Annie let herself touch him without checking the room for ghosts.
His shoulder under her hand. The back of his neck.
The familiar line of his jaw. Familiar, but not the same.
Nothing was the same. That was the point.
Afterward, when they lay together later, the room dark around them and the lake wind moving the curtains, Annie rested her head on his chest and listened to his heart. Nathan’s hand moved slowly over her hair, then stopped.
“Is this okay?” he asked.
“Yes.”
His hand continued.
Annie could have slept. Instead, she lifted her head. “Nathan.”
He looked down at her. “Yes?”
“If I ask you someday whether you miss her, I need the truth.”
Pain crossed his face. “Okay.”
“Not the noble answer. Not the answer that protects me.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
“Do you miss her now?”
Nathan looked toward the ceiling. His hand remained still in her hair. “I miss who I thought she was. I miss feeling like there was someone who knew the worst parts of me and would never ask me to change. I don’t miss what she did. I don’t miss who I became around her. And I don’t want her back.”
Annie watched his face in the dark.
The answer hurt. It also rang true.
“Okay,” she said, and laid her head down again.
Nathan’s hand resumed its slow movement over her hair. “Do you hate me tonight?”
“No.”
“Do you love me tonight?”
“Yes.”
His chest rose under her cheek. He did not ask anything else.
In the morning, sunlight spilled across the warm walls and turned the room gold. Annie woke with Nathan beside her, one arm across his own chest as if he had gone to sleep afraid of reaching for her without permission. She smiled before she could stop herself.
Downstairs, they made coffee together. Nathan burned the first round of toast. Annie scraped it into the trash and took over. He accepted demotion without comment, which was wise.
After breakfast, they walked down to the dock. The boards were damp beneath Annie’s shoes. The lake stretched silver and blue under a sky clearing by degrees. Nathan stood beside her, hands in his pockets, ring visible against the dark denim.
“I want to move back home,” he said.
Annie looked at the water. “I know.”
“When you ask. Or when we decide in therapy. Or when it makes sense for more than my loneliness.”
Annie looked back at the lake. “Soon.”
His face changed, but he kept his voice steady. “Maybe.”
She reached for his hand. His fingers closed around hers, warm and careful. They stood that way for a long time, watching the light move across the water.
One month became six weeks.
Six weeks became one night when a storm knocked out power in Brookline and he stayed on the sofa because the streets were flooded. Then a morning when Annie found him making coffee in yesterday’s shirt and did not want him to leave.
They kept going to therapy. Annie asked the same questions more than once.
Nathan answered them more than once. Sometimes he answered badly, and they fought.
Sometimes Annie heard Brooke’s voice in a memory and became sharp before she knew why.
Sometimes Nathan went quiet in that old way, caught himself, and said what he was feeling before silence could become a locked door.
Erin came for Sunday dinner and brought store-bought muffins because she had decided she was not going to pretend to bake.
Maggie came over and finally brought tissues, then used paper towels anyway out of principle.
Tricia sent fewer emails. Officer Keene called once more to update Annie on the case, then faded into the strange category of people who had mattered intensely for a season and then returned to their own lives.
Brooke left Boston. Whether by choice, strategy, or humiliation, Annie did not know. For a while, she checked the security app every morning and every night. Then one day she realized she had forgotten until lunch. A week later, she forgot for two days.
The first peonies bloomed in June.
Nathan brought them home wrapped in brown paper from the florist near his office.
He had moved back three weeks earlier with boxes, calendar transparency, therapy appointments, and a new habit of leaving his phone face up without making a display of it.
Annie did not trust him perfectly. She trusted him actively, with attention. He earned it actively, with truth.
The peonies were absurdly lush, pale pink with ruffled centers. Annie put them in a vase on the kitchen island while Nathan unpacked groceries. Normal groceries. No imported olives from Brooke’s favorite shop. No spiced nuts Annie could not eat. No fig anything.
“These are ridiculous,” Annie said.
“You said peonies should be ridiculous.”
“I did.”
“I remember.”
She looked at him across the island. “I know you do.”
Nathan set the last grocery bag aside and came around the counter slowly enough to give her time to move away.
She did not. He kissed her in the kitchen where so many of their worst conversations had happened, one hand at her waist, the other resting lightly on the edge of the island near the vase of peonies.
When he pulled back, Annie touched his ring.
“Always home,” she said.
Nathan looked at her, the words landing between them with all their old hope and new cost. “If we keep choosing it.”
“Yes.”
Outside, the maple tree had filled with green leaves. Inside, the house held them without flinching. Annie turned back to the flowers and adjusted one stem, then another, until the arrangement looked perfectly imperfect.