Chapter 18
CLAIRE
One Thursday afternoon in September, I took my thin sweaters down from the top of the wardrobe, and my old handbag slid to the floor with them.
It lay at my feet with the clasp open. I bent to pick it up, my fingers already touching the handle, but I didn’t lift it right away.
One corner was worn pale, and half a pack of tissues was still inside.
When I’d packed my things to leave the hospital that day, I’d put the tissues in this same little pocket, sure they’d come in useful on the way.
I sat on the edge of the bed, my hand resting on the bag.
Outside, someone was backing up a car. A warning beep sounded a few times. The washing machine had just stopped, and I’d been about to take out the clean sheets. Everything in my life had somewhere to go next. But suddenly I had no idea where to put this bag.
It had been a year. My shoulder had recovered enough for me to reach the top of the wardrobe now.
I had a regular place on the library’s schedule, and tonight I didn’t have to rush to make dinner.
Nora was at Ethan’s as arranged. I’d even decided to eat the leftover stew while finishing the last few chapters of my novel.
But the tears fell anyway.
I set the bag upright, aching for the woman I’d been.
She’d waited by the door for someone who had already promised her.
She’d even decided which side she wanted to sleep on when she got home.
I wished I could get her somewhere she could rest easy a little sooner, so she wouldn’t keep watching the door.
When my phone rang on the bed, I was pulling out a tissue. Ethan asked if I’d seen Nora’s painting apron. Our daughter said it might be at the very bottom of the bag he’d taken with him.
“Side pocket,” I said. “She didn’t want to get that book dirty.”
I heard a zipper, then his quiet voice telling Nora he’d found it. Footsteps moved a little farther away, but he didn’t hang up.
“Claire, are you crying?”
I pressed the tissue to the corner of my eye. In moments like this before, I would have cleared my throat and made it sound as if I were drinking water, or blamed the window I’d just had open.
“I found the bag I used when I left the hospital,” I said. “I’ve been thinking about that day today.”
His end went quiet. I looked at the handle in my lap and waited for him to speak. Faintly, I heard Nora in the hallway calling for someone to look at her drawing. He answered that he’d be right there.
“I remember,” he said at last. “I remember that day, and I know it’s September again.”
I drew a breath without finishing the thought for him. His breathing paused.
“I really want to hold you,” he said. “Do you want to see me now? I can make arrangements for Nora and come over.”
I glanced at the bed covered in sweaters. Among them was a gray cardigan he liked. I could almost picture him standing here, folding it for me. I wanted to lean against him, but I didn’t want to worry about the hurt on his face while I cried.
“I want to be alone tonight.”
“Okay.” His voice was a little rough. After a while, he added, “I was going to ask if I could have dinner with you.”
“Not today.”
“I understand.”
Neither of us hung up right away. I could hear the faint sound of his hand touching his phone case, and the tissue crumpling in my own hand.
He was still there, but I had nothing to say that would make us both feel better.
Finally, I told him to go look at Nora’s drawing.
He agreed, disappointment still audible in his voice.
That evening, I hung up the sheets and ate the stew. I read only two pages of the novel before letting it rest in my lap and staring into space. Later, I showered and chose a movie I’d seen before, waiting to grow sleepy.
I didn’t throw the handbag away. I wiped it clean and put it in the fabric box at the bottom of the wardrobe. As I closed the lid, I cried for a little longer.
Two days later, on Saturday morning, I was finding a book for a reader at the library when I saw an excessively gloomy face on the cover. Suddenly, I wanted to know how Ethan would defend this man.
Last month at the harbor, we’d gotten sauce from our grilled corn all over our hands and still insisted on writing our guesses for the killer on napkins.
He’d been wrong, yet remained deeply suspicious of a gardener who hadn’t done anything.
I only had to think of him pointing to the hat in the book and saying an honest man wouldn’t pull the brim that low to start smiling.
On my lunch break, I sent him a message.
“Still 6:00 p.m. tonight? I want to see you.”
He replied quickly: “6:00 p.m. I’ve been waiting since this morning.”
I leaned back in my chair and smiled, my fingers pausing over the screen before I added, “Me too.”
That evening, Mia took Nora for their planned sleepover and jigsaw puzzle. After waving them off, I changed my earrings and put on lipstick.
When Ethan arrived to pick me up, his gaze lingered on my face for several seconds.
“What is it?”
“I’m trying to think of something that doesn’t sound rehearsed.”
“Start with hello, then.”
“Hello.” He took my hand, his thumb brushing my knuckles. “You’ve made me forget what comes next.”
Smiling, I rose onto my toes and kissed him. His hand settled at my waist, warm through the thin fabric. When the kiss ended, I stayed where I was and lightly touched my nose to his cheek.
“Now we can go,” I said.
We had dinner at his house. He’d made roasted fish, and there was bread and a large bowl of salad on the table. I helped slice the lemon. He opened the oven and stepped back half a pace as the heat hit him, then refused to admit he’d forgotten his other oven mitt.
“Is that hand in charge of applause?” I asked.
“Supervision.”
I slipped the mitt onto his hand and gave his fingertips a squeeze. He looked at me and forgot to take out the fish. Only when I reminded him dinner was still inside did he turn back with a smile.
At the table, I handed him the novel I’d borrowed at lunchtime. He promised to examine the evidence first, then frowned at the opening page.
“This house needs repairs,” he said. “By the time the police get there, the roof will be about to cave in.”
Laughing, I took the book back and set it beside me. That was exactly the sort of reply I’d hoped for when I saw it at the library today.
He turned on the light and gave me more fish. After a day busy with readers, I was hungry. He waited while I took a few mouthfuls.
“I was still hurting a little this morning,” I said.
His smile faded. He kept his hand at the edge of the table instead of reaching for me right away.
“And now?”
“Now I’m very happy to be here.”
I put my hand on his. He looked down and took it, murmuring softly.
After dinner, we cleaned the kitchen together.
I washed and he dried. At first, he remarked on how efficient we were, but then he kept coming too close, and the clean plates began to pile up on the counter.
When I turned, he was looking at the little silver hoop below my earlobe. Then his gaze moved to my lips.
I dried my hands and caught the hem of his shirt, drawing his head down. This kiss lasted longer than the one at the door. His arms closed around me, pulling me near, and I leaned into him until I caught sight of the plates still stacked beside the sink.
He followed my gaze. “What about the plates?”
“You’ve already supervised them.”
He let out a short breath that was almost a laugh. I hung up the dish towel and returned to his arms.
“I want to stay tonight,” I said.
He rested his chin against my hair for a moment. “Stay.”
On the way upstairs, I rested my hand on the familiar banister.
I’d walked this way so many times that my palm still found the same worn spot.
At the bedroom door I stopped. The lamp on what had been my side was off.
The nightstand was clear. Two days earlier I had sat on another bed with that old hospital bag in my lap. I hadn’t expected to miss this room.
Ethan turned to look at me. He didn’t ask what was wrong.
“I’m coming,” I said, and squeezed his hand before I went in with him.
I closed the door and put my necklace and both earrings beside the bed. Ethan set his watch on the other side. We spoke quietly to make sure we had contraception covered. He went to close the curtains. I made room on the bed and told him to leave the light on.
He came back and lay beside me. The little lamp cast a warm color over the curtains.
I didn’t wait for him to settle. I swung a leg over his hips, took his face in both hands, and kissed him hard enough that his breath caught.
For a moment I remembered the nights I had lain here waiting for him.
The memory did not make me stop. It made me want his mouth on mine while the light was still on, so this would not blur into those other nights.
I kept my hand at his shoulder and pulled his shirt up.
He helped me get it off, then reached behind me for the zipper of my dress.
I stood on my knees to let it fall. My bra went next, then his hands were on my breasts, rougher than he had been in my apartment, as if he had been holding that back for days.
I pushed into his palms and said, “Yes. Like that.”
He sat up against the headboard. I stayed in his lap and dragged his fly open. When I wrapped my hand around his cock, he swore under his breath, quiet and startled.
“I’ve thought about this room empty, without you,” he said against my mouth. “I don’t want it empty tonight. I want to see you.”
“Then look.” I stroked him, my thumb passing over the wet head. “I came here because I wanted you. Not because the house asked me to.”
He kissed my throat, then my breast, and slid his hand between my legs, under the last scrap of fabric.
I was already wet. His fingers found my clit at once and rubbed in a tight circle that made my hips jerk.
I held his wrist there and rode the motion, no longer waiting for him to decide what I needed.
“Don’t be careful with that,” I said.
He wasn’t. Two fingers pressed into me while his thumb kept working, and the sound I made was too loud for the old quiet of this room. I didn’t lower it. I rocked on his hand until my thighs shook, then caught his wrist and pulled it away before I finished. I wanted him inside me for that.
I pulled my underwear off and reached for the drawer on what had been his side.
The box was where it used to be. I tore a condom open and rolled it down his cock myself, watching his face while I did it.
His stomach jumped under my knuckles. I gave him one more slow stroke over the latex, just to see his mouth open.
When I sank onto him, I did it in one slow drop that forced the air out of both of us.
He filled me deeper in this position. I braced my hands on the headboard and stayed there, adjusting, feeling every inch of him stretch me until I was seated flush against his hips.
His hands settled at my waist, not lifting me, only holding on.
“Claire.”
“I know what I want.” I rose and came down again, setting a pace that was hungrier than the first night in my apartment.
The lamp put a clear line of light across his chest and the place where our bodies joined.
I looked at that on purpose. I wanted the picture.
I wanted the bed to hold this version of us, not only the one in which I had listened for his key in the dark.
He thrust up to meet me. I let him, then took the rhythm back, grinding down when I needed more pressure on my clit.
Sweat gathered between my breasts. His mouth found one and sucked, and I held his head there and kept moving, the heat in my stomach gathering fast and without apology.
Each time I came down, his cock dragged over the spot that made my breath break. I used that. I used him.
“I’m going to come,” I said, not as a warning so much as a fact I was done hiding.
“Let me feel it.” His voice was rough, but still unmistakably his. “I’ve missed watching you. Don’t look away.”
I didn’t. The orgasm hit hard enough that I had to drop forward against his chest, pulsing around his cock, my forehead on his shoulder.
I kept my eyes on the lamp over his shoulder while it went through me, bright and ordinary and chosen.
He held me through it and kept his hips still until I could breathe.
Then I pushed myself upright again, shaky, and rolled my hips once more, still sensitive, still not finished with the night.
“Your turn,” I said. “I want to feel you lose it.”
He turned us, catching his weight on one forearm, and drove into me from above.
I wrapped my legs around him and pulled.
The headboard knocked the wall. Neither of us laughed it off.
He fucked me in short, deep strokes, eyes open, and I watched him lose the last of that careful distance.
I reached down between us and touched myself where he was moving in and out of me, not because I needed another climax, but because I wanted him to see that too. His rhythm broke.
When he came, he did it with my name in his mouth and his body locked tight against mine, the tremor running all the way down his back. I held his hips there until it was over, until I could feel him throbbing inside the condom, until the room went quiet again except for our breathing.
I ran my fingers through his hair and let the light stay on. Around us were his nightstand, my empty one, the curtains he’d closed. I could enjoy being here tonight.
He eased out, dealt with the condom, and came back to the bed. I shifted over so he could lie down. The sheet stuck a little to my stomach. I left it. He was looking at me.
Later, he went downstairs for two glasses of water. I propped myself up, took one, and drank a few sips. He sat back on the edge of the bed without lifting his own glass.
“What is it?” I asked.
“I’m a little afraid you’ll leave soon.”
I set my glass down and leaned against him. I was happy to be here, even with Thursday still on my mind.
“I’ve already told Mia I’ll pick Nora up before work tomorrow morning. I don’t want to leave now.”
He lay back beside me and told me about a local hotel whose lounge chairs all faced the windows. He’d spent twenty minutes sitting with his neck turned, trying to make his point. They’d finally agreed to move two chairs.
Laughing, I rested against him. His fingers traced the back of my hand as he finished the story.
After a while, he asked, “Are you free after work tomorrow?”
I lifted my head to look at him. “Would you like to have dinner together, then?”
He said yes so quickly that I laughed too. I rested my cheek against his shoulder again and began seriously working out what was left in the fridge, and whether it was enough to make a dinner we’d both like.