Chapter 2
CLAIRE
Ididn’t call Mia until we’d left the hospital.
She answered by telling me Nora had eaten her snack. Then she heard me ask if I could spend the night at her place. I heard a chair scrape on the other end.
“Of course. Where are you?”
“Just left.”
“Okay. I’ll come down to meet you.”
She didn’t ask where Ethan was. I sat looking at the screen after the call ended, then laid the phone on my lap. When we arrived, Mia leaned in to look at me before taking the bag from the driver. Her lips pressed together briefly.
Once we were inside, Nora ran into the hallway. She saw my sling and stopped just before she reached me.
“Can I hug you?”
“On this side. Gently.”
She leaned carefully against me. I kissed the top of her head, smelling children’s shampoo and a little toast. She asked when my arm could come out, then whether I was sleeping at Aunt Mia’s tonight too.
“Yes. I’m going to rest here for now.”
“Who’s taking me to school tomorrow?”
“We’ll work it out and tell you in the morning.”
I told her my arm needed time to heal. When she remembered her reading log was still at home, Mia arranged for it to come over with her backpack in the morning. Satisfied, Nora went to inspect the bed her aunt had made up.
I stood by the guest room door, suddenly unsure where to go.
“Sit here first.” Mia pulled a chair closer. “I’ll untie your shoes.”
“You don’t have to. I can?—”
“I’m already down here.”
She took off my shoes and pushed them beside the bed, bracing a hand on her knee as she got up. That little awkwardness made my nose sting. I quickly looked down to find the discharge instructions in my bag.
“Don’t worry about all that stuff that was in the guest room,” she said. “I moved it into my room.”
Through her doorway, I could see boxes crowding her bed. I began apologizing for the extra work.
“Tomorrow you can help me decide what to throw out,” she said, closing her door. “I never manage it alone.”
I nodded, grateful for something I could do sitting down.
At dinner I held my spoon in one hand and ate slowly.
Mia cut up Nora’s food, then moved my bowl a little closer without stopping to watch how much I ate.
Because of that, I managed a few more bites.
She put everything I needed within reach on the nightstand, followed the hospital’s instructions for looking after me, and took a call from the caregiver we knew to confirm the arrangements.
Ethan should have been doing this.
I tried to follow Nora’s story about a classmate gluing two homework pages together, but kept glancing at my silent phone. Even after she’d said good night, I watched the doorway.
Mia left the door ajar and sat on the edge of the bed with my cup.
“Where exactly is he?”
I knew she’d been holding that in since she met me downstairs.
“I don’t know. He took Vivian and Sam home.”
I told her about Sam’s treated wound and his grandmother waiting with the car. I even explained that Vivian and her mother hadn’t been getting along.
Mia frowned. “So Ethan sent the driver to the hospital and went to her house himself?”
“No.”
I looked down at the rim of the cup and suddenly couldn’t go on.
“He was right in front of me.”
The water trembled. Only when Mia took the cup did I realize my hand was shaking. I tried to finish, but the breath I drew turned into an ugly sob.
“He was already there. He touched my face and joked with me. I thought…”
Mia set the cup down and moved to the side I could lean toward. I pressed my forehead into her shoulder, my tears soaking into her top. Crying pulled at the injury. The harder I tried to stop, the more ragged my breathing became. All I could do was grip her sleeve and wait for the pain to pass.
“How could he do that?” Her voice was tight. “You just had surgery.”
“I begged him yesterday.”
“That wasn’t begging.”
“I know.” I wiped my face. “But today I almost asked him again. Please don’t go.”
Mia rested a hand on my back. From down the hall, Nora bumped the bed frame in her sleep. I checked my phone.
No messages.
Mia saw. I put it facedown again, my cheeks hotter than when I’d been crying.
“I keep checking,” I said. “In the car. At dinner. I kept thinking he might be downstairs any minute.”
“Do you want him to come?”
I nodded, then shook my head. “I don’t know. If he did, I wouldn’t know what to say.”
I touched the collar he’d straightened. I wanted that Ethan back, and even my anger was complicated.
When the phone lit up, my hand moved before I could think.
It was a shared calendar reminder: Overseas move—confirm family itinerary.
I opened it and scrolled a little. Several appointments had already been entered, including times to look at potential homes.
Ethan had said we were just looking into it, and I’d kept thinking it was still a long way off.
Now dates and times filled the screen, line after line.
Even the afternoons I would need to keep free had already been blocked off.
Mia asked if it was him. I shook my head and turned off the screen.
Three years earlier, I’d sat on the edge of another bed just like this, looking at an itinerary on my phone.
That mattress still had its protective plastic on it.
Outside the room, the movers were asking whether all the boxes marked “study” should go together.
I’d just sent a goodbye message to my colleagues at the library and was holding the card they’d tucked into my gift.
I’d found that job after our first move. I’d only just learned to recognize the children who came in regularly to borrow books, only just found people I liked having lunch with, and already I had to leave. I slipped the card into a folder so the movers wouldn’t see me cry.
Ethan sat down and put his arm around me, saying it would be nice to return to the city where we’d met.
“I know,” I said then. “But I was just starting to like my life there.”
He kissed my hair.
“I’m asking a lot of you this time. Next time, we’ll listen to you first. Wherever you want to live, we’ll talk it through.”
I sat leaning against him for a long time. Later, I picked up the tape myself, packed my work files, and sealed the box. I believed him that day. It wasn’t because he’d said something beautiful. When he held me, I felt he really knew what I was losing.
The guest room’s bedside lamp shone on the back of my hand. I rubbed a fingertip over my wedding ring and left it on.
“Mia, when you have time in a few days, could you go back and get some things for me?”
“Of course. I’ll get you a change of clothes tomorrow to start with.”
“Bring more than that. The things I wear all the time. And my work files.”
She looked at me. Outside the room, I heard the refrigerator begin to hum.
“I don’t want to live like this anymore.”
Once I’d said it, I waited to feel afraid.
I waited for the familiar thought: Things aren’t easy for him either.
Just wait until this is over. But I was only tired.
So tired that the thought of going home tomorrow and sitting at the table listening to his explanation made me want to crawl back into this bed.
I didn’t know what I would do next. But tomorrow I wasn’t going home as usual.
I picked up my phone and typed a few lines to Ethan.
“Nora and I are at Mia’s, and we’re both safe. I need to rest tonight, so we won’t meet. After that, we need to have a serious talk.”
Before sending it, I deleted the “I’m sorry” at the beginning. Afterward, my finger lingered over the message. I wanted to add, Don’t worry, but that might make him think I’d simply chosen a different place to rest.
“Hold on to this for me.” I gave Mia the phone. “If anything comes in about Nora’s morning, can you check it?”
She agreed and adjusted the pillow behind me. I lay down slowly and didn’t reach for the phone again. She took the empty cup from beside the bed, then paused at the door to check one more thing.
“All those work files in the study. You want me to bring those too?”
“All of them.”