20. The Jacket
Chapter twenty
The Jacket
He was not expecting anyone.
That was the thing about living above a newspaper office in a small town, people occasionally appeared at the bottom of the stairs with questions about the building or packages that had been delivered to the wrong address or, in Harold Jensen's case last week, no apparent reason at all beyond curiosity about what the apartment looked like now that Hannah was gone and someone new was in it.
Ethan had given Harold a brief tour and Harold had looked at everything with the satisfied expression of a man filing information away for future use and left without saying much, which was somehow more unsettling than if he had said a great deal.
As likeable as Harold was, sometimes his silences were a bit unnerving.
So when someone knocked on a Tuesday morning he finished the sentence he was writing and got up from the table without particular urgency and opened the door.
Julie Anderson was standing at the top of the stairs with his jacket folded over her arm, her own heavier jacket on against the late October cold. It had been three days since the movie and there had been little more between them than a nod and a "hello" at church on Sunday morning.
He stood there for a moment.
She had clearly walked over from the funeral home, which was four blocks, which meant she had put on her coat and picked up his jacket and walked four blocks through the October morning to return it.
She was standing in his doorway with her hair slightly wind-messed from the walk and her cheeks carrying the cold of it and she was looking at him with the expression he had been trying to name since August and had not yet named.
"I brought your jacket back," she said.
"I see that," he said.
He stepped back from the door and she came in and he closed it behind her. She stood in the small entryway of the apartment looking around at the space with the quiet attentiveness she brought to everything, taking it in the way she took things in, thoroughly and without rushing.
"It's nice," she said. "Hannah did well with it."
"She did," he agreed. "Can I make you coffee?"
She looked at him. "I can't stay long. I have a family coming in at ten."
"It's eight fifteen," he said. "You have time for coffee."
Something moved at the corner of her mouth. "All right," she said. "Coffee."
He went to the kitchen and she followed and stood in the mock doorway which was little more than a counter separating the kitchen from the living room, while he made it, still holding his jacket.
He was aware of her the way he was always aware of her, with the specific attention that had become his default mode since August and showed no signs of recalibrating.
"You walked," he said.
"It's four blocks."
"It's cold."
"I'm from Minnesota," she said. "Cold is not an excuse."
He handed her the coffee and she set his jacket over the back of one of the kitchen chairs and wrapped both hands around the cup, savoring the warmth of it.
He leaned against the counter and they stood in the small kitchen in the late October morning and it was comfortable the way things between them had become comfortable and also charged in the way things between them had also become charged, those two qualities existing simultaneously in a way he had stopped trying to separate.
"How are you doing?" he said. "Since Kali."
She considered the question the way she considered things, seriously and without deflecting.
"Some days are fine," she said. "Some days I reach for the phone to call her and then remember.
" She looked at her coffee. "Tuesday mornings are hard.
She used to bring muffins on Tuesday mornings.
" She paused. "Wednesdays are hard, too. She used to call me every Wednesday."
"I know," he said. "You told me."
She looked up at him. "I did?"
"You tell me things," he said. "I don't think you used to do that. Tell people things."
She was quiet for a moment. "I don't," she said. "Usually. Except for Kali. She was a good friend."
He held her gaze and she held his and the kitchen was very quiet around them and outside the October wind moved down Main Street and rattled the window slightly in its frame and neither of them looked away.
This was the thing that had been building since August. He could feel it the way you felt weather coming, a change in pressure, something in the air that was different from what had been there before.
They were standing in his kitchen and she had walked four blocks through a briskly cold October morning to bring him his jacket and she was telling him she told him things she didn't usually tell people.
They were looking at each other and the space between them seemed to be closing.
He pushed off the counter.
He moved toward her slowly, the way you moved toward something you wanted to be careful with, and he watched her face while he did it and she watched his and she did not step back, not immediately.
She stood her ground and looked at him and he could see what it cost her to stand her ground and he thought she was the bravest person he knew, which was something he had not expected to think about Julie Anderson but which was completely true.
He stopped when there was very little space left between them. Perhaps four inches.
He could see the exact moment she made her decision. It moved across her face the way decisions moved across her face when she made them, quietly and completely, and she took a small step back and looked at her coffee cup and said his name in a voice that was not quite steady.
"Ethan."
He stopped. He stayed exactly where he was and did not push it and did not make her explain it because she did not owe him an explanation and he already understood.
"I know," he said.
She looked up at him. Her eyes were very clear and very honest and she said "I'm sorry" in a voice that meant it completely and he shook his head.
"Don't apologize," he said. "You told me you weren't ready and I knew that. I'm not sorry I tried and you don't need to be sorry you stopped it." He took a step back himself and gave her the space back and picked up his own coffee. "We're okay, Julie."
She looked at him for a long moment. Something in her expression shifted and settled into something he thought might be gratitude and something else underneath that he was not going to name yet.
"We're okay," she said.
They drank their coffee in the small kitchen with the October wind outside and the Herald below them and Pine Hollow going about its Tuesday morning, and the almost that had almost happened was still in the room with them but it was not uncomfortable, it was just present, like something that had been acknowledged and set aside carefully for another time.
She put her cup down at eight forty and said she needed to get back and he said of course and walked her to the door. She picked up her coat from the hook and put it on and he opened the door for her.
She stopped in the doorway and looked at him.
"Thank you for the coffee," she said.
"Thank you for returning the jacket," he said.
She looked at the jacket still draped over the kitchen chair. "You might need it," she said. "It's October."
"I would have managed," he said.
She almost smiled. The real one. Then she went down the stairs and he stood in the open doorway and listened to her footsteps going down. Then he went back to the kitchen and picked up his jacket from the chair and held it for a moment.
She had folded it carefully. Of course she had.
Julie Anderson folded things carefully and returned them and walked four blocks in October and stood in his kitchen and told him she told him things she didn't usually tell people and almost let him close the distance and then stopped herself because she was honest about where she was and he had told her he respected that and he did.
He looked at the jacket a moment and then unfolded it to hang it on the hook by the door. He caught a whiff of her perfume still lingering in the jacket. The smell of her.
He shook off the lingering scent and put the jacket on the hook by the door and then went back to the table and opened his laptop and looked at the sentence he had been writing when she knocked. He could not remember what it was supposed to say.
He closed the laptop.
He looked out the front window at Main Street below, at the late October morning doing its grey and certain thing, and he thought about the look on her face in the moment before she stepped back, the moment when she was standing her ground and he was close and the space between them was almost nothing.
She had wanted to. He was certain of that. She had wanted to and she had stopped herself and she had told him she was sorry and he had told her not to be and they were okay and all of that was true.
But she had wanted to.
He was going to be patient. He was going to keep showing up and keep being honest and keep the coffee coming and let her arrive at ready in her own time and on her own terms, because that was what he had told her he would do and he meant it.
And if she never arrived, he would make himself be okay with that, too.
But she had wanted to, and that was the thing he was going to sit with on a Tuesday morning in October while Pine Hollow moved through its day below his window, and it was enough.
For now it was enough.