17. Chapter 16 #2
The afternoon passes in the quiet rhythm of small tasks: groceries put away, a shower that runs too hot, an outfit chosen and discarded and chosen again.
By the time Dex pulls up in the black car, I'm wearing jeans and a sweater and carrying a tote bag with the book, the crackers, and a bottle of wine that costs more than I would have spent previously but less than Zoltan would have bought without thinking.
The drive to the Upper West Side takes forty minutes in traffic.
Dex plays jazz on the radio and doesn't try to make conversation, which is one of the things I like about him.
He also, I've learned, has a sister who lives in Queens and a cat named Chairman Meow, and he once drove Zoltan to four different pharmacies at 2 AM when Missy had an ear infection.
The house is quiet when I let myself in. The kitchen smells like the garlic bread Zoltan must have started, and the table is set with three places, and Missy is sitting on the counter with her legs swinging, watching the oven like it might do something interesting if she stares hard enough.
"Liv!" She launches herself off the counter and into my arms. I catch her, barely, and she squeezes my neck tight enough to hurt.
"Did you bring the book?"
"I brought the book."
"Did you bring the crackers?"
"I brought the crackers."
"Did you bring the wine?"
I glance up. Zoltan is standing in the doorway, arms crossed, the corner of his mouth twitching.
"She knows about wine?"
"She knows about everything. She's six going on forty." He crosses the kitchen and takes the tote bag from my shoulder, his fingers brushing mine. The touch is casual, habitual, the kind of gesture that used to make me freeze and now just makes me lean into him.
"Smells good in here," I say.
"Garlic bread. Missy insisted."
"Garlic is my favorite," Missy announces. She's back on the counter, watching us with the sharp attention of a child who notices everything. "Papa said you would say it's not really a flavor."
"I said no such thing."
"You implied it," I say. "With your face."
He almost smiles. I catch it, file it, add it to the collection of almost-smiles that used to frustrate me and now feel like a language only I speak.
Dinner is loud and messy, the way dinner always is with Missy. She tells me about her reading test in exhaustive detail, including the part where she had to read a passage about penguins and decided penguins are her new favorite animal, displacing the previous favorite, which was capybaras.
"Capybaras are still good," she says, "but penguins have tuxedos."
"Sound logic," I say.
"I thought so."
Zoltan watches us from across the table, his plate mostly empty, his coffee untouched. He does this sometimes: goes quiet and just looks, like he's memorizing something. I used to think it was calculation. Now I know it's something else.
After dinner, we move to the couch. Missy wedges herself between us with the book in her lap, already open to chapter nineteen, already bracing for what she knows is coming.
I read. My voice fills the quiet room, the words familiar now after three months of slow progress. Charlotte is dying. Wilbur is saying goodbye. Missy's breathing goes shallow beside me.
"She was a true friend," I read, "and a good writer."
Missy's hand finds mine and squeezes.
I keep reading. Charlotte's children hatch. Wilbur greets them. Three stay behind.
"Joy. Aranea. Nellie," Missy whispers, as if the names are a prayer.
I close the book. Missy is crying, the quiet kind of tears that run down her cheeks without sound. Zoltan hands her a tissue without being asked.
"That was sad," she says.
"It was," I agree.
"But also happy?"
"Also happy."
She thinks about this for a moment, her face scrunched in the way it gets when she's working through something big. Then she says, "Like when you came back."
The words land in my chest like a stone dropped in still water. I glance at Zoltan. He's looking at Missy with an expression I can't quite read.
"That was sad," Missy continues. "Because you were gone. But then it was happy. Because you came back and stayed."
I don't trust my voice, so I just nod.
Missy yawns, the emotional weight of the ending finally catching up with her. Zoltan lifts her off the couch and carries her toward the stairs, her head already drooping against his shoulder.
I stay on the couch. The book is still in my hands, the cover worn soft from months of reading. Charlotte and Wilbur and three small spiders who chose to stay.
Zoltan comes back ten minutes later. He sits beside me, close enough that our shoulders touch, and doesn't say anything.
The kitchen is quiet. The house is quiet. Outside, the city hums its constant hum, but in here, everything is still.
"She asked about you," he says finally. "While you were gone. Every day."
"I know." Petra told me, in texts that arrived even when I wasn't responding. Missy made pancakes. Missy finished her puzzle. Missy drew a picture with three people in it and wouldn't tell me who they were.
"I should have told you about the background check," he says. "Before Marcus did. Before any of it."
"You did tell me. Eventually."
"Eventually isn't good enough."
I turn to face him. The lamplight catches the sharp angles of his face, the dark hair, the coffee-colored eyes that miss nothing. The same face I used to find irritating, then intriguing, then terrifying in what it made me feel.
"I wrote something," I say. "In my notes app. I want to show you."
I pull out my phone and open the file. Not the fake name. The real one. Liv Strauss, Notes.
He waits.
I read the line I wrote this morning, the one about trust and choosing and the specific kind of bravery it takes to let someone see you: "I used to think love was a liability. Now I think it might be the only math that matters."
The words hang in the air between us.
Zoltan's hand finds mine on the couch. His fingers lace through mine, warm and solid, and he doesn't let go.
"Write more," he says.
I lean into him. The cedar-and-coffee smell is just the kitchen now, just home, just the specific geography of a life I chose. Outside, the city keeps moving. Inside, we stay exactly where we are.