Chapter 23
Tessa
The mornings he was on shift had a different shape now.
I'd be aware of it before I was fully awake. The bed was warmer in the middle than at the edges. The hum from the fan he'd taken to leaving on was lower than the sound of him breathing on the pillow next to mine. The light at the curtain was the only thing keeping me oriented.
He wasn't there. He'd be home at eight.
I would lie in bed for a few minutes, in the warm middle, and let myself miss him.
I'd never been a woman who missed a man. I'd been a woman who managed a man, or tracked one, or stayed out of one's way. Missing was new. It wasn't painful, exactly. It was just a low ache that said the person who belonged to this morning wasn't in it.
I'd think about his alarm going off at five, and how I'd felt him sit up and kiss the back of my shoulder before he went. He'd been efficient about it. Eight years of doing the same thing in the same order. He'd been quiet on the stairs so he wouldn't wake Noah. He hadn't even turned the lamp on.
I laid in the dark after he'd gone and listened for the truck to start.
I'd spent eight months waking up at four-thirty with my heart racing. Now I was up at five because Cole was up at five, and the kind of awake I was now was different. I was awake for him, wanting a glimpse of him before he was gone for a whole day.
I busied myself the whole day at the bakery and then at home. I struggled to sleep, wriggling with excitement that he'd be home in the morning.
I'd gotten up at five. Made coffee. Got Noah to the bus. Wiped the kitchen counter. Folded the laundry I'd been letting sit on the dryer for two days.
By seven, I was at the window. I'd never been a woman who waited at windows. The sixteen-year-old version of me would have laughed at the woman at the window. But the woman at the window had chosen him, and the woman who'd chosen him got to wait for him to come home, so I let myself wait.
The truck pulled in at three minutes past eight.
I watched him get out. He was tired the way he was tired after a twenty-four, the slope of his shoulders a little heavier, the bag on his shoulder hanging lower. He'd taken his hat off in the truck. His hair was a mess. He looked up at the window before he came in, the way he had started doing.
He saw me at the curtain.
His face changed when he saw me. Not a smile, exactly. Something around his eyes.
I went to the door and opened it before he got to it.
The day after a twenty-four was my favorite day.
It was my favorite day, the way certain Sundays had been my favorite days as a kid—nothing scheduled, the house quiet, your feet on the couch, and nobody telling you to move them.
It was my favorite day when Noah was at school, and Cole was home, and the apartment was ours, and the only thing on either of our calendars was each other.
He'd showered. He'd eaten. He'd been quiet through breakfast in the way he was quiet when his body was just starting to remember it was allowed to rest. By eleven, we were on the couch in the living room. The TV was on with the sound low. Some documentary about boats. Neither of us was watching it.
I had my legs over his lap. My head was on his shoulder. His arm was around my waist, heavy and warm, his thumb moving in slow, absent passes across the side of my hip.
"I've been thinking."
"Yeah?"
"Noah."
"Mm."
"He hasn't had a real trip in a long time. Not since—before. I've been thinking it might be time. Somewhere fun. Somewhere he can just be a kid for a few days and not worry about anything."
"Yeah."
"I don't know where yet. Somewhere with water, maybe. He's been asking about the beach since Jack and Ben went."
"That's a good drive. We could make a weekend of it."
We.
He'd said it without thinking. The way he said most things now.
I tipped my chin up so I could see his face.
He was looking down at me. Not at the TV. He'd been looking at me for a while.
I leaned up and kissed him.
He kissed me back, slowly, his hand coming up to the side of my face. He kept it there a second after the kiss ended.
"Tessa."
"Yeah."
"You're a good mother. I want you to know I see it."
I went still against him.
He kept his hand on my face. His eyes didn't move off mine.
"Noah's lucky he's yours. He knows it. I know it. I want you to know I know it."
I'd been a mother for nine years, and I'd never been told I was good at it.
Nicholas had told me, more times than I could count, that I was indulgent, anxious, hovering, soft, that I made Noah weaker every time I held him after a bad dream. Cole hadn't held Noah after a bad dream. Noah didn't have bad dreams anymore.
I put my hand on Cole's wrist and pressed my cheek into his palm.
"Thank you."
"Yeah."
I stayed there.
After a minute, he said, "Can I tell you something?"
"Anything."
His arm tightened a fraction at my waist. He looked past me—at the window, then the wall, then the ceiling. Then he came back to my face.
"My mom."
He stopped.
"Tell me."
"My dad died when I was small. Five. Heart thing, nothing anybody could've stopped. My mom—she didn't cope with it. Or she coped with it strangely. I'm not sure which one's truer."
He looked at the ceiling again.
"She wasn't home much. She'd go out at night.
Sometimes she'd come back the next morning.
Sometimes, a few days. There were different men.
Different cars in the driveway when there were cars at all.
I used to sit at the kitchen window and wait for her.
I'd watch the road. I'd tell myself she was on her way.
Sometimes, she was. Most of the time, she wasn't."
His voice had gone flat in the way it went flat when something cost him to say.
"I was probably eight when I stopped sitting at the window.
Maybe nine. I just—figured out she wasn't coming.
And the times she did come, there'd be a guy with her.
Some guy on the couch with a beer. Different guy every time.
Some of them were nice to me. Most of them weren't anything to me. They were just there."
I didn't move from his shoulder.
"Shelby was thirteen when our dad died. She was eighteen when I stopped sitting at the window.
She'd been raising me since I was five, and she got better at it as she went.
She made me breakfast. She made sure I ate.
She helped me with homework. She sat through parent-teacher conferences and pretended she knew what she was doing. She made cookies on Sundays."
He stopped.
"I've never told anybody this."
"It's okay."
"The reason I didn't sleep around—I know it sounds simple.
I just couldn't. Every time I thought about it, I saw one of those guys on the couch.
I didn't want to be one of those guys. I didn't want to be a man some kid was going to grow up remembering on her mother's couch with a beer. I didn't—I couldn't."
I lifted my head off his shoulder.
I sat up enough to see his face. He let me.
"Cole."
"Yeah."
"That's not simple. That's—that's the opposite of simple."
He looked at me. His eyes were tired. There was something in them I hadn't seen before, and it took me a second to recognize it.
He was waiting to see if I was still here after he'd said it.
"I'm here."
"Yeah."
"I'm here, Cole."
He nodded, once. Small.
"The recipe box on the shelf. The one you've been making cookies out of.
Those were Shelby's. I've been avoiding bakeries since she died.
I'd go when Aunt Jenna or Jamie asked me to pick something up, but I never got anything for myself.
I haven't eaten anything she made since she died. I haven't been able to."
I felt my hand go up to my mouth.
"The first batch of cookies you made in our kitchen—I came in, and I smelled them, and I—"
He stopped.
"I felt like she was telling me to put it down. The thing I've been carrying. Like she was telling me she was tired of watching me carry it. Like she was telling me to let her go."
I'd been baking Shelby's recipes in his kitchen for weeks without knowing. The man I loved had been letting me.
"Cole."
I couldn't get more than his name out.
He brought his hand up. He put it on my jaw the way he did. He looked at me for a long second.
"I love you, Tessa."
He said it plainly.
I felt the weight of it land.
It landed with everything he'd just told me—the boy at the kitchen window, the sister at the table, the kitchen on Marlboro Street, the cookies. It landed with the room he'd painted in the color of my eyes and the way he'd said we about a weekend at the beach without thinking.
I leaned forward.
I put my hands on either side of his face.
"I love you, Cole."
I kissed him.
I kissed him for a long time.
We didn't say anything else for a while.
Two days later, I was at the bakery alone.
It was a Wednesday. Slow morning. Mrs. Thompson was at the back doing the books. Benjie was at the front with me, restocking the case from the morning bake. The bell on the door had rung once in the last hour.
Benjie said, "You look good, Tessa."
I glanced at him.
"Yeah?"
"You stopped doing the hair thing. And the lenses." He gestured at his own face. "I know it wasn't my business when you started. I figured it wasn't my business when you stopped. But you look good. Lighter. Happier."
I smiled at him.
"Thanks, Benjie."
"It suits you."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
He went back to the case.
I stood at the counter and let the compliment settle.
I hadn't been complimented on my own face in a long time.
The face I'd been wearing for eight months had been designed to be unmemorable.
The face I had now was the one I'd been born with.
It was a strange thing, catching my reflection in the bakery window and recognizing it.
I let my mind go where it wanted to go.
It went where it had been going for two days.
To Cole on the couch. To the way his hand had felt on my jaw when he'd said it.
To the way I'd said it back. To the way we'd spent the rest of that afternoon, mostly quiet, mostly close, with my head on his chest while he ran his thumb up and down my arm and the boat documentary played to an audience of nobody.
To the Ashford Street house. Almost finished now.
Cole and Keith arguing about the porch furniture in a way that meant they were both having fun.
Noah making a list of which friends he wanted to invite for the first sleepover at the new place.
The room down the hall that Cole had painted in my color.
That's yours, he'd said. Do whatever you want with it. He'd said it like it was obvious.
To the man Cole was. The man who had read a romance novel to learn how to be careful with me.
The man who hadn't slept with anybody for thirty-four years because he didn't want to be one of the men on his mother's couch.
The man who'd carried his sister for seventeen years and was, because of me, finally putting her down.
Cole was the first man in my life who'd thought about what was best for me before he thought about what was best for him.
I hadn't known a man could do that.
The bell on the door rang.
I looked up.
I had time to register the suit before I registered the face. Light gray. Cut close. The kind of suit a man wears in a city, not a small bakery in coastal South Carolina. Then the face.
Nicholas.
My hand went to the counter.
He stopped two steps inside the door. Hands at his sides, palms forward, the way a man surrenders.
"Tessa. I'm not here to hurt you. I just want to say goodbye."
Benjie's hand was already on the back-room door.
"Tessa. Do you want me to—"
"It's okay, Benjie."
"You sure?"
"I'm sure. Stay where you are. I want you there."
Benjie didn't move from the doorway. I was glad he stayed.
"Say what you came to say, Nicholas."
He nodded.
He took a breath. He held my eyes the way he had held them at every formal dinner for ten years—direct, attentive, the eyes of a man who had practiced being trusted.
"I've been thinking a lot about what's happened.
The custody. The case. Everything since you left.
I've been thinking, and I've come to a place where I can say this and mean it.
I've lost. I've lost cleanly. The judge ruled.
The audit confirmed nothing they didn't already know, but enough to give the court pause.
The protective order's in place. I'm out of options that don't make my situation worse. "
He took another breath.
"So I'm done. I'm going home. I'm putting in for a transfer to the New York office. I'll be out of South Carolina by the end of the month. I'm not going to fight any further. I won't see Noah again unless he's grown and chooses it. I won't see you. I'm letting go."
I didn't move.
"I owe you an apology. I won't deliver one in this bakery.
I'm not going to do that to you, and I'm not going to make a scene that you didn't ask for.
But I want you to know I'm sorry. And I want you to know I see what you've built here.
The bakery. The boy. The man." He paused.
"He seems like a good man. He'll take care of you. "
He took a step back.
"I hope he makes you happy, Tessa. You deserve everything you get."
He nodded at me. He nodded at Benjie.
He turned and went out. The bell rang on the way.
I stood at the counter with my hand flat on the wood. The bakery was the bakery. The display case was the display case. Benjie was still in the back-room doorway, watching me, with his mouth a tight line.
"Tessa."
"I'm okay."
"You sure?"
"I'm okay, Benjie. Thank you."
He waited a second longer. Then he went back to the case.
I stayed at the counter.
Nicholas didn't apologize. Nicholas didn't let go.
Nicholas had never, in ten years of marriage, stood in a doorway and admitted defeat without something on the other side of the admission.
Whatever he'd just done in my bakery hadn't been a goodbye.
It had been a thing that looked like a goodbye, polished to look like a goodbye, performed for an audience of Benjie and me and a coffee machine.
You deserve everything you get.
It had been a wish, on the surface.
Underneath, it had been a promise. I'm going to make sure you get what you deserve.
I didn't move from the counter for a long time.
The bakery was quiet. The bell didn't ring again.
The dread filled my chest, slowly, the way water fills a basement. It found every low place.