15. Heath #2
“Maternity jeans.” She held them up, checking the size. “Actually, I could use these. Mine are getting tight.”
“Good. That’s good.”
She found the elephant and held it up, her expression softening. “This is cute.”
“I thought... I thought the baby might like it. Eventually.”
She set the elephant aside carefully, her hand lingering on its soft fur. Then she kept digging through the bags, exclaiming over items, laughing at some of my more questionable choices, accepting others with a quiet nod of approval.
While she was distracted, I slipped away.
I had noticed things the last time I was here.
Small things. A radiator that wasn’t heating properly, leaving the front room cold.
A shelf in the hallway that was starting to pull away from the wall.
The kinds of problems I could fix without being asked, without drawing attention to myself, without making it seem like I was trying too hard.
I found a toolbox in the basement and got to work.
The radiator was an easy fix, just a stuck valve that needed to be loosened.
The shelf took longer, but I managed to rehang it properly, making sure it was level and secure.
I checked a few other things while I was at it, tightening a loose doorknob, adjusting a cabinet door that wasn’t closing right.
When I came back to the entryway, Delphine was sitting on the floor surrounded by bags and boxes, the elephant tucked against her chest. Her eyes were bright when she looked up at me.
“Where did you go?”
“Just fixing a few things.” I shrugged, trying to seem casual. “The radiator was making that clicking sound it makes when the valve sticks.”
She stared at me for a long moment. A thought passed across her face, one I couldn’t quite read.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For all of this. You didn’t have to.”
“I wanted to.”
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the letter. The paper was slightly crumpled from the drive, but the words inside were intact.
“I have one more thing.” I held it out to her. “You don’t have to read it now. You don’t have to read it at all if you don’t want to. But I needed you to have it.”
She took the letter carefully, her fingers brushing against mine. She didn’t open it, just held it in her lap, looking at it.
I should leave. I knew I should leave, should give her space, should let her process everything without the pressure of my presence. But I couldn’t make myself move. She was right there, so close, and I had missed her so much.
“Del,” I said softly.
She looked up.
I took a step toward her, then stopped. I waited, giving her the chance to tell me to back off, to leave, to get out of her space.
She didn’t.
She got to her feet as I crossed the room, and I wrapped my arms around her, pulling her gently against my chest. She stiffened for a moment, and I almost let go, almost stepped back. But then she relaxed into me, her head settling against my shoulder, her hands coming up to rest against my back.
And God help me, she smelled like herself.
Not perfume. Underneath it. The smell at the back of her neck that I’ve known since I was twenty-four years old and that’s never once, in eleven years, stopped doing to me exactly what it was doing to me now, in her mother’s hallway, with a letter from her divorce lawyer in my coat pocket.
I kept my hands high and flat on her back.
The way you hold someone you’re not allowed to hold.
Because the whole ugly truth is that I wanted her so badly in that hallway that I counted the coats on the rack to get through it.
Six coats. I counted six coats while my pregnant wife stood in my arms and gave me four seconds.
That’s the thing I could never make anyone understand about September.
They think a silent man is a man who’s stopped.
I never stopped. Not for one hour of my life.
I was not a man who had gone cold. I was a man standing in a burning building who had decided, for reasons that made sense to nobody including me, not to shout.
I held her. Just held her, breathing her in, memorizing the feel of her in my arms. She smelled the same, that familiar combination of shampoo and lotion and the note underneath that was just her. I had missed that smell. I had missed everything about her.
“I love you,” I whispered against her hair. “I know that doesn’t fix anything. But I need you to know it.”
She didn’t answer. But she didn’t pull away either.
After a long moment, I made myself let go. I stepped back, my hands falling to my sides, already missing the warmth of her.
“I should go,” I said. “Let you rest. Call me if you need anything.”
She nodded, still holding the letter in her hands.
I walked to the door and opened it, stepping out into the cold afternoon air. I looked back one more time and found her watching me with a look I could not translate.
“Goodbye, Del.”
“Goodbye, Heath.”
I pulled the door closed behind me and stood on the porch for a moment, trying to gather myself. Then I walked to my car and got in and started the engine.
About ten blocks out, it hit me. I couldn’t drive back to Newport. I couldn’t put three hours of distance between us, couldn’t go back to that empty house, couldn’t spend another night alone with nothing but my regrets for company.
I found a hotel near her parents’ place and checked in. The room was small and generic, nothing like the luxury I was used to, but I didn’t care. I sat on the edge of the bed and stared at the wall, thinking about the woman three miles away who held my whole heart in her hands.
Tomorrow. I would try again tomorrow.
Whatever it took. However long it took. Every day, until she believed me.