Chapter 5
ETHAN
Before seeing Claire on the fifth day, I visited an empty house we owned.
Morning sunlight filled the living room.
With a ground-floor bedroom and space for a desk, it would suit her while she recovered.
I wouldn’t move in. She could have care, comfort, and an easy school run without coming home to me.
I photographed the rooms and put the keys in a separate pocket. Claire had agreed to twenty minutes. Enough, I hoped, to show her she needn’t rush any other decisions.
When I arrived at Mia’s, Claire was at the dining table, leafing through a folder with her uninjured hand. Mia had picked up her clothes and files that morning. The bags they’d come in were still against the wall.
The corners of the folder’s cover were worn and fuzzy. I recognized it from the study a few days earlier.
“Looking for something?” I asked.
“My old work records.”
She was trying to slide a sheet of paper into a clear sleeve, but the corners kept slipping out. I reached over. She hesitated, then let go. I held the sleeve open and slipped the paper inside. She pointed to the space beside her, so I closed the folder and put it there.
“Thank you.”
It was such a small thing, yet I actually felt relieved. She was still willing to let me help.
I sat across from her, set my phone on the table, and brought up the photos. “I found a place you could look at. You don’t have to come home. Let’s just get through this stretch as well as we can.”
She didn’t touch the phone, only looked at the screen.
“The house on the east side?”
“Yes. I went inside today. It’s in good shape. The bedroom’s on this floor, and there’s room by the window for the long table you like. The furniture there now doesn’t work, but we can change it.”
I took out the keys and set them in front of her. The metal tapped softly against the table.
“The caregiver can go there too. You can concentrate on recovering, and Nora will have her own room. You can decide about the rest once you’ve moved in.”
She hadn’t touched the keys. I enlarged the photograph of the window.
“Morning sun, just as you like it.”
I waited for her to start arranging the room in her head. Instead, she looked at me.
“What about you?”
“I wouldn’t live there. If you still don’t want to live with me, I can?—”
“I’m asking when you plan to be there.”
“I can clear a few more days this week. Next week I can come over Tuesday and Thursday evening, and keep one day free on the weekend. My father has a dinner on Wednesday, but if it ends early?—”
She rested her fingers on the keys and pushed them toward me.
“You’ve made arrangements for everyone again, except yourself.”
I looked at the keys. The little confidence I’d felt a moment earlier suddenly turned to embarrassment.
“I’m telling you when I can come over.”
“I know.”
“You wanted specifics, and I gave them to you. If that’s not enough time, I can move things around again.”
She leaned back very slowly. My gaze went to her shoulder without thinking. She didn’t cry out or take the phone I was offering her again.
“Ethan, I didn’t ask you to choose a house for me.”
“But you need somewhere to live. If you don’t like this one, we can look at others.”
She looked at me and pressed her lips together lightly. I knew that expression. At home, she would sometimes stop halfway through saying something, look like that, then say never mind. Today she didn’t say never mind. She just waited for me to stop.
“Are you really not even willing to try anymore?” I asked.
“Why am I always the one trying to adjust?”
I wanted to tell her how much I’d rearranged these past two days. But she’d said always, and I was still arguing about this week.
I looked down and saw a bit of an old label sticking out of her folder. She’d only gotten those files back that morning, and I’d already found her another room to put them in.
“I thought you’d like it,” I said.
“The light is lovely.”
I looked up, almost reaching for my phone again.
“But you won’t be there,” she said. “When I’m in pain, someone else will come and ask about it.
When Nora goes to sleep, someone will tell you she’s asleep.
You’ll come over when you’re done, and we won’t have to argue about why you’re late again, because we won’t be living together in the first place. ”
“That’s not what I mean.”
“But after hearing what you said, that’s all I can picture.”
Her quiet voice left me with no excuse to ask her to calm down.
I kept my hands under the table. “I promised I’d stay with you that evening. Vivian’s mother had her car, and Sam had been treated. I knew they could go home without me.” My throat was dry. “I could have stayed.”
“Then why didn’t you?”
I remembered Vivian’s hand on my sleeve, her thanks. “I thought you’d wait. That I could make it up to you afterward.”
Claire looked down at the keys. I almost reached for them, wanting to put away what I’d brought before she had to refuse it again.
The phone on the table went dark, taking the photo of the bright room with it. I didn’t touch it again.
“I’m not going to live in that house,” she said. “Take the keys back.”
When I picked them up, one key caught outside the ring and wouldn’t lie flat with the others. I tried twice, then simply closed my fist around them. Claire saw, but she didn’t hurry me.
“I don’t want you to suffer just so you can leave me.”
“I don’t intend to. I’ll choose somewhere comfortable, and I’ll have help.”
She was choosing a comfortable home and going through her work records. I couldn’t persuade her she needed rescuing from the life she wanted.
I checked the time. The twenty minutes we’d agreed on had already passed.
“Should I go?”
“I’m a little tired.”
I stood. When she tried to get up too, I brought her a cushion and held it until she was settled. We were close enough for me to see the moisture at the corner of her eye. I wanted to kiss her.
“Claire, I miss you.”
She looked at me, some of the tension easing from her face.
“It’s not just coming home to an empty house,” I said. “Yesterday I saw a terrible movie ending, and the first thing I wanted to do was call you over to watch it.”
The corner of her mouth moved. “I thought you hated it when I guessed the ending.”
“You tell me who’s lying half an hour early. Every time.”
“Because you always believe the one with glasses.”
We almost smiled at each other. I stayed beside her, wanting to keep that familiar argument going.
But she lowered her eyes and smoothed the edge of the cushion.
“I’m not coming home today.”
She’d answered what I hadn’t asked.
“Okay.” It was hard to say. It wasn’t okay with me. I wanted to stay, to find that smile again. But she was a little paler than when I’d arrived.
I picked up my phone and said goodbye. She didn’t tell me when to come next, and even at the door, I couldn’t bring myself to ask again.
I’d gotten into the car but hadn’t started it when Vivian’s message arrived. Could I go with her on Saturday to choose a desk for Sam? She said he wanted my opinion, and she wasn’t sure about the dimensions herself.
My thumb hovered over the text field. Normally I would have asked what time, already mentally checking my schedule for an opening on Saturday. But just now, at the dining table, I’d told Claire I could keep a day of the weekend free for her.
She hadn’t taken me up on the offer. Knowing that didn’t make me feel any better.
I turned the phone facedown beside me. The keys in my jacket pocket dug into my waist. I took them out, the metal warm from my hand, every last key still there, just as when I’d left the house.
I sat in the car holding them and, at last, didn’t call my assistant again.