Chapter 4 Before the Fire #2
The drifting was never cruel. That was what made it so hard to fight.
A pipe burst at the resort in Montana. His mother fell on the ice and needed him to drive her to the orthopedist. Priscilla’s marriage ended, and she called him at two in the morning because she couldn’t stop crying.
Each time, he had a good reason. Each time, he’d promise to make it up to me.
Each time, I was the one who could wait.
I didn’t just wait, though. That was something I needed to remember, sitting in Heather’s car with the mountains going by.
I didn’t sit at home in the dark with the candles burning down.
When he canceled on my cousin’s wedding in Santa Fe because of a zoning hearing, I went by myself and danced with my uncles until one in the morning.
When he missed the dinner party we’d planned for our friends, I hosted it without him and didn’t save him a plate.
When he said he’d come to the Botanic Gardens concert and then texted at the last minute, I took Heather and Jo, and I didn’t answer his calls until the next morning.
A year ago, on a Sunday afternoon in our kitchen, I’d told him plainly that I felt married to someone who kept putting me last. I remember the words because I’d rehearsed them.
I remember he’d gone white. I’d told him I loved him and I wanted this marriage, but I couldn’t keep living like this, and that if something didn’t change I didn’t know how much longer I could stay.
That was when we’d gone to the counselor. Three sessions, and they’d been good sessions. Hank had been honest in them, more honest than I’d expected. Then the Montana resort had flooded, and he’d missed the fourth session, and the fifth, and we’d never rescheduled.
And then, in September, I’d found out I was pregnant.
I remembered telling him. I’d set the test on his side of the bathroom sink and waited in the bedroom.
When he came out, he sat down on the floor right there in the hallway, with the test in his hand, and cried.
He’d said he was going to be different. He’d said this changed everything.
He’d said he wanted our child to grow up knowing their father was there.
I had believed him. I had wanted so badly to believe him.
“Les?” Heather’s voice pulled me back. “You’ve been quiet for twenty miles.”
“I’ve told him,” I said. “Over and over. I’ve told him exactly what I need. I’ve told him how it feels. I’ve told him what will happen if it doesn’t change. There’s nothing left for me to say that I haven’t already said.”
Heather glanced at me and then back at the road. “So what do you do when there’s nothing left to say?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have to.
We stopped for gas in Idaho Springs, at the station off the interstate where every ski traffic jam in Colorado eventually ended up.
Heather went inside for coffee and more ginger chews.
I got out of the car because my legs had gone stiff and stood beside the pump in the cold, in the avocado socks and borrowed sweater, with my hands tucked into my sleeves.
My old phone buzzed in the glove box. I didn’t take it out. When Heather came back, she handed me a decaf, looked at the car, and said, “You got a news alert. I saw it light up. It’s the fire.”
“I don’t want to look at it.”
“Okay.”
“Is there a picture?”
She hesitated. “Of the lodge. From the drive. There’s a lot of smoke.”
I thought about asking whether there was a picture of anything else. Of a man in a white shirt carrying a woman in a silver dress across that drive. I didn’t ask. I got back into the car, and Heather pulled out onto the on-ramp, and neither of us mentioned it again.
We got home a little after three. Our house in Washington Park was a hundred-year-old brick Tudor that Hank had bought the year before we married and that I’d spent seven years making into a home.
The hydrangeas along the front walk had been cut back for the winter.
Hank’s running shoes sat on the mat inside the front door where he’d kicked them off on Friday morning before we drove up to the mountains.
His coffee mug was in the sink, rinsed but not washed.
Everything was exactly where we’d left it two days earlier, as though nothing had happened at all.
Heather made me grilled cheese and tomato soup and sat with me while I ate it.
At four forty-five, while she was rinsing the pot, a text arrived on my old phone.
Fire marshal ran long. Leaving at 5. Home by 9 at the latest. I promise.
Heather read it over my shoulder and said nothing, which was its own kind of commentary. She left at five to feed the greyhounds, but only after making me swear I’d call her if I needed anything.
At eight fifty, another one.
Insurance adjuster just got here. I’m so sorry, Les. They need me to walk the east wing with them. I’ll be home by eleven. I promise.
I read it sitting on the living room sofa with a blanket over my legs and the television off. I read the words I promise and felt nothing at all. No anger. No surprise. It was like reading the weather report for a city I’d already left.
I believed that the insurance adjuster was there. I believed the east wing needed walking. I believed it was important.
I also knew, as surely as I’d known anything in my life, that I would never again sit on a sofa counting the hours until my husband kept a promise he’d made less than twelve hours after I had nearly died.
At nine fifteen, I went upstairs, opened the hall closet, and took down my suitcase.