Chapter 25 The Shower #2
“I’m not telling you this so you’ll do anything,” Nancy said. “I promise. I just thought you should know that I heard it. That’s all.” She stood up and smoothed her skirt. “It’s a lovely party, dear. You look beautiful.”
She went back outside.
I sat on the stool in Heather’s kitchen for a long time.
Through the window I could see Hank at the grill, laughing at something Jo had said.
He hadn’t told me. He’d sat next to me in Dr. Kessler’s waiting room on Thursday morning for fifteen minutes, with an empty chair between us, and asked me about Priya’s handoff.
He’d had his phone turned off. He hadn’t said one word about his father’s surgery, or whatever had happened with Pike, or what his mother had said on the phone.
He’d just been there.
The party wound down around five. People drifted off in twos and threes, hugging me and patting my stomach and telling me to call them the minute she came.
Evelyn left with her nephew, kissing my cheek and whispering He’s trying, dear, but it’s still your decision in my ear, which made me laugh and nearly cry.
The Cavanaghs left at five fifteen, Clive complaining that he’d never find the car.
Hank folded every folding chair in the yard and carried them to the garage, loaded Clive’s rocking horse and the rest of the heavy gifts into Heather’s SUV so she could drive them to my condo later, said goodbye to my mother, thanked Heather and Jo and Amy, and came to find me by the lilacs.
“It was a beautiful party,” he said. “Thank you for letting me be here.”
“Thank you for coming.”
He nodded. He didn’t linger. He said goodbye and walked out through the side gate, and I watched him go.
Afterward, when everyone was gone, Heather and I sat on her back porch steps in the long gold evening light with our shoes off.
Jo was inside doing dishes. My mother had gone to lie down in the guest room.
The greyhounds were asleep in a heap on the grass, exhausted from a day of successful thievery.
“So,” Heather said.
“So.”
“He fixed a table leg with a matchbook.”
“I saw.”
“He waited for you to ask before he helped you out of the chair. I watched him almost come over and then stop himself. It was like watching a golden retriever resist a tennis ball.”
I laughed. Then I stopped laughing.
“Heather,” I said. “I think I’m in trouble.”
She looked at me.
“It was easier before,” I said slowly. “In November, in December, even in March. I knew what he was. I knew he’d be good for a while.
He’s always good for a while. And then he’d drift back.
I was sure of it. I was just waiting for it to happen, so I’d know I’d been right to leave.
” I pressed my palms against my eyes. “And it hasn’t happened.
It’s been almost six months. He hasn’t missed a single thing.
He doesn’t ask me for anything. He doesn’t tell me what he’s doing.
I find out from his mother at my baby shower that he told her no.
That he took Lesley would understand and turned it into the reason to show up.
” My voice cracked. “I don’t know what to do with that. ”
Heather was quiet for a moment.
“You’re scared he’s actually changing,” she said.
“I’m terrified he’s actually changing.” I dropped my hands.
“Because if he’s not, I know what to do.
I know how to leave. I already did it. I have a lawyer and a nursery and a life.
I could do all of it without him and be fine.
I know I could.” I looked out at the lilacs.
“But if he is changing, then I have to decide. For real. And I have to decide knowing that six months isn’t seven years.
That a good spring isn’t a guarantee. That he was good in Santa Barbara, and good after Tuscany, and good after the kitchen, and every time, life got busy again and he slid right back. ”
“So what’s the question?” Heather asked.
I thought about it.
“It’s not whether he can be good for a while,” I said.
“He’s proved that. It’s what happens next.
When the baby’s here and nobody’s sleeping.
When a resort floods again. When his parents get older and need him more.
When some new Priscilla calls at two in the morning.
When the fire’s a year ago, and then two years, and then five, and nobody’s watching anymore.
” I swallowed. “What happens when life gets hard again, Heather? That’s the question.
And he’s the only one who can answer it. ”
Heather put her arm around my shoulders and didn’t say anything. We sat there together while the light went from gold to blue and the first stars came out over Park Hill.
Before I went inside, I took out my phone.
Can you come by the condo on Tuesday evening? There’s something I need to ask you. Not about the baby.
It was the first time since the coffee on Tennyson Street that I’d asked to talk about something other than our daughter.
The reply came in less than a minute.
I’ll be there. What time?
Seven.
I’ll be there at seven.
I put the phone down on the porch step and sat looking at it. Behind me, through the screen door, I could hear Jo humming as she washed dishes and my mother’s soft snoring from the guest room. Above me, the sky had gone deep blue.
He would be there at seven. I believed that now. I’d seen enough to believe it.
What I didn’t know yet was whether he’d still be there at seven in a year, when nobody was watching. And I was going to have to ask him, and then I was going to have to decide whether I believed the answer.