18. Harry
— ? —
Harry
I set the soup dumplings on the kitchen island in front of her.
She looks at the container, and then at me.
“You went back to that place.”
“You like their soup dumplings.”
“It’s forty minutes each way.”
“I had time.”
She opens the container, and the smell of ginger and pork fills the kitchen. I slide onto the stool across from her with my own container of noodles.
We eat in silence for a few minutes.
“The whispers in the lobby don’t bother me,” she says finally.
I look up from my noodles.
“I meant what I said in the elevator,” she continues. “One visit isn’t going to change what they think of me.”
“It bothers me.”
“I can tell.”
“They were talking about you as if you weren’t standing right there and couldn’t hear every word.”
“I heard. I just don’t care.”
“I care.”
“Then stop.”
“I can’t.”
She looks at me with her chopsticks suspended over the container and a dumpling halfway to her mouth.
“Leave it alone, Harry.”
I don’t agree to that. I also don’t argue. I just pick up my chopsticks and eat another bite of noodles.
“These are good,” Jules says after a moment.
“They should be, for forty minutes.”
“Stop looking smug.”
“I’m not smug. I’m satisfied.”
She throws a dumpling at me.
After dinner, I do her PT exercises with her on the rehab room floor.
Soren left her a list of stretches to do between sessions, and tonight, for the first time, she doesn’t send me out of the room when she starts on them. We spread out on yoga mats and I guide her through each movement, with my hands on her leg, adjusting her form.
“Ten more,” I say, with my hands on her calf as she extends her leg.
“I’ve already done ten.”
“Those were warm ups. These are the real ones.”
“That’s not how Soren counts them.”
“Soren isn’t here.”
“Soren wouldn’t cheat.”
“I’m not cheating. I’m rounding up.”
“Rounding up from ten to twenty-two is not rounding. It’s fraud.”
“It’s aspirational counting.”
She glares at me, but she does the stretch. I watch the muscles in her thigh flex and feel the tension in her calf, and I focus on the work instead of on how good it feels to touch her.
“That was twelve,” she says when she’s done.
“That was ten.”
“You’re a cheater and a liar.”
“I’m thorough and invested in your recovery.”
She laughs.
The sound stops me cold. It’s the first time she’s laughed at anything I’ve said since the anniversary, since before the fire, since everything fell apart. It’s a real laugh, bright and unexpected, and for a second she looks the way she used to.
I stare at her.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing. I missed that.”
She looks away, but I can see the flush creeping up her neck.
The last one on Soren’s list is the hamstring stretch, which requires her to lie on her back while I hold her leg up against my shoulder.
She settles onto the mat and extends her good leg toward me. I grip her calf and lift it slowly, pressing it back toward her body until I feel the stretch in her hamstring.
It’s the closest we’ve been since yesterday morning. Her leg is against my shoulder and my hands are on her skin, and her shirt has ridden up to expose a strip of her stomach.
We both know it, and neither of us mentions it.
“Hold it there,” I say. “Thirty seconds.”
She breathes out slowly and lets the muscle release into the stretch.
“Soren doesn’t breathe like that when he does this one,” she says.
“What?”
“You’re breathing weird. It’s distracting.”
“I’m not breathing weird.”
“You’re breathing loud. You’re thinking about things you shouldn’t be thinking about.”
“I’m thinking about your hamstring flexibility.”
“You’re a terrible liar.”
I adjust my grip on her leg and press it a little further back. She makes a small sound.
“Too much?” I ask.
“No. Keep going.”
I hold the stretch and count to thirty in my head, and I try not to think about the last time she made that sound.
“Soren isn’t married to you,” I say finally.
“What?”
“You said Soren doesn’t breathe like this. Soren isn’t married to you.”
She’s quiet for a moment.
“Fair point,” she says.
We finish the rest in silence and move to the kitchen for water. She’s better on her crutches now, faster and more confident. In another few weeks she won’t need them at all.
And then she leaves.
I push the thought away and focus on filling her glass.
“Why couldn’t you ever say no to her?” Jules asks suddenly.
I set the glass down. “What?”
“Avery. For twenty years you’ve never been able to say no to her. I’ve always wondered why.”
I lean against the counter. This is a conversation I’ve been avoiding for most of my life.
“You don’t have to tell me,” Jules says. “I’m just trying to understand.”
“No, you deserve to know.” I take a breath. “When I was twelve, a couple came to the home. They were looking to adopt. They were nice people with good jobs, and a house with a yard and a dog.”
Jules is watching me.
“They liked me. They came back three times. Hazel told me they were going to put in the paperwork. I was going to have a family.”
“What happened?”
“Avery found out.” I stare at the floor.
“She was nine. I’d been looking out for her since she showed up at seven, when the bigger kids went after her for her red hair and I made them stop.
She came to my room crying, begging me not to leave her.
She said I was the only person who had ever protected her.
She said if I left, she would have no one. ”
“Harry.”
“I tanked the interview. On purpose. I acted out and said terrible things and made sure they wouldn’t want me. And they didn’t. They left and never came back.”
Jules is quiet for a moment.
“What did you say to them?” she asks. “In the interview. What did you do to make them leave?”
I stare at the floor. I’ve never told anyone the specifics, not even Hazel.
“I told them I’d steal from them,” I say. “I told them I’d take whatever I could carry and run away the first chance I got. I told them they were stupid for thinking I’d ever want to be their son.”
Jules doesn’t say anything.
“They were nice people,” I continue. “They would have been good parents. And I sat across from them and said the worst things I could think of until I saw their faces change, and I saw them give up on me.”
“Does Avery know?”
I look up at her.
“Does she know what you did for her? What you gave up?”
“Yes.” The word comes out rough. “She came to my room that night, after the couple left, and she thanked me. She said I was the only person who ever loved her enough to stay.”
“And?”
“And she’s reminded me of it every time I’ve tried to pull away since. Every time I’ve suggested she might need to stand on her own, and every time I’ve come close to drawing a line.” I pause. “She’s very good at reminding me what I owe her.”
Jules turns her water glass on the counter for a moment before she speaks.
“Did you ever find out what happened to them?” she asks. “The couple.”
I look at the floor.
“Yes.”
“When?”
“The year I made my first million. I had someone look them up.”
Jules is quiet, waiting.
“Two years after they left the home without me, they adopted a little girl from another agency across the state.” I pause. “She grew up in that house with the yard and the dog. She went to college on a fund they set up for her. She’s in her twenties now, married, with a kid of her own.”
“Have you ever contacted them?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“What would I say?” I look up at her. “Hello, I’m the twelve year old who told you he’d steal from you. Sorry about that. Glad everything worked out.”
“That’s not what I meant.” She stops and starts again. “Why did you look them up in the first place? What were you hoping to find?”
I think about that year, when the money started coming in and I could finally afford to answer a question I’d been carrying since I was a kid.
“I needed to know whether I’d cost them a child,” I say. “Whether what I did in that interview made them give up on adoption entirely, and whether I’d ruined their chance at a family.”
“And you hadn’t.”
“No. They tried again two years later and they got their daughter.” I stare at the counter. “I’d only cost myself a family. Nobody else.”
Jules doesn’t say anything for a long moment.
“Harry.”
“I’m not looking for sympathy. I made the choice, and I live with it.”
I make myself finish the thought.
“Ever since then, walking away from Avery has felt like being the people who left me at a police station. It’s felt like abandoning someone who has no one else, and proving that I’m exactly the same as the people who threw me away.”
“You were twelve years old.”
“I know.”
“You were a child. A child shouldn’t have had to make that choice. And you’ve been punishing yourself for it ever since.”
I don’t respond. There’s nothing to say, because she’s right.
“You don’t owe her your marriage,” she says.
“I’m starting to understand that.”
“I understand why you did it,” she says finally.
“You do?”
“I get why you feel like you owe her. I get why it’s been so hard for you to let go.” She meets my eyes. “But understanding doesn’t mean I can live with it.”
The kitchen is quiet. We’re standing close, closer than I realized.
The counter is at her back and I’m in front of her, and at some point in the last few minutes the distance between us has disappeared. I can smell her shampoo, and I can see the pulse in her throat.
Her hand comes up and rests flat on my chest.
I go very still.
She’s looking at my mouth. Her fingers curl slightly against the fabric of my shirt, and her breath is coming faster.
I want to kiss her. I want to close the last few inches and pull her against me and lose myself in her the way I did yesterday morning. I’m sure she’s going to let it happen. I’m sure she’s going to tip her head up and let me kiss her the way I’ve been wanting to all day.
But two nights ago I leaned in, and she put her hand over my mouth and told me not to do it again. Yesterday she told me it wasn’t forgiveness, and she sent me out of her room.
So I wait. I don’t move, and I let her decide.
One second passes, and then two, and then three.
Her hand presses against my chest, and she steps back.
“I should go to bed,” she says.
“Okay.”
She reaches for her crutches, which are propped against the counter. On her way out, she stops by the chair where I tossed my jacket earlier.
“You should hang this up,” she says. “It’s going to get wrinkled.”
She picks up the jacket.
A small plastic bag falls out of the pocket and hits the floor.
She leans on one crutch and bends down to pick it up, and she freezes when she sees what’s inside.
It’s her rings. It’s the engagement ring and the wedding band, still marked with ash and soot from the fire. The paramedic cut them off her swelling fingers and handed them to me in that bag, and I’ve carried them in my pocket every day since.
Jules holds the bag up to the light. She looks at the rings inside for a long moment, and then she looks at me.
I don’t say anything. I don’t explain, and I don’t ask her to put them back on.
She looks at the rings for another long moment.
Then she crosses the kitchen and puts the bag back in my jacket pocket. She doesn’t say a word. She just picks up her other crutch and leaves.