Chapter 5
Chapter Five
NAOMI
On Tuesday Graham beat me home.
When I saw the Range Rover in the driveway at ten past six, my first thought was that something had happened.
He hadn't been home before seven on a weeknight since August. I sat in my car with the engine off and ran through the list: his mother's heart, the King of Prussia deal falling apart after all, someone seeing something, someone telling him I'd found something.
Inside, the kitchen smelled like garlic in olive oil. He was at the stove in his work shirt, sleeves shoved to the elbows, pushing shrimp around a pan with a wooden spoon. A bottle of the Rioja I liked was open on the island, and he'd already poured me a glass.
"Hi," he said, a little shy.
"Hi. What's wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong." He turned the flame down. "I left at five. Just walked out. Mark looked at me like I'd set the office on fire."
"Why?"
He shrugged, and the spoon dripped oil onto the stovetop. "I've been gone a lot."
I put my bag on the bench and picked up the wine without drinking it. The junk drawer was three feet from where he was standing, with the fold of tape in his handwriting under the Thai menus. I could feel it there like a splinter I couldn't see.
"You have," I said.
"So I'm here." He came around the island, took the glass out of my hand the way he'd been doing a lot lately, and set it on the counter. When he put his arms around me, his shirt smelled like his office, printer toner and the eucalyptus stuff the cleaning service used, with Graham underneath it.
"I'm sorry I've been a ghost," he said into my hair.
For a second I kept my arms at my sides. Then I put them around him, because it was Graham. Twelve years of muscle memory turned out to be stronger than two receipts and a strip of tape.
We ate at the island. The shrimp was overcooked, which neither of us cared about.
He asked about the Moat, and when I told him about Mr. Hollis and the frozen corners, he asked the kind of questions he used to ask, the kind that meant he was actually listening.
Which sedges. How deep the gravel went. Whether the kids would be allowed to walk in it.
"They'll walk in it whether they're allowed to or not," I said.
"That's how you know it's a good design."
He washed and I dried. He flicked water at me from his fingers, so I snapped the towel at his thigh. It was stupid. It felt like being twenty-nine.
Upstairs, he undressed me slowly, like he'd been thinking about it all day.
The only light came from the hall, a yellow stripe across the foot of the bed.
He stood me in it and took his time with the buttons on my blouse, never looking away from my face while he did it.
His scraped knuckle, healing now, grazed my collarbone as he pushed the silk off my shoulders. Goosebumps ran down both my arms.
I reached for his shirt. My fingers weren't steady on the buttons. He let me fumble through three of them before he laughed low in his throat, pulling the shirt over his head himself.
I put my palms flat on his chest. His heart was going as fast as mine, which surprised me more than anything else that night.
He walked me backward until the mattress hit the backs of my knees, then went down on the rug to work my trousers over my hips.
On the way he stopped at the small raised scar on my left hip, the one from a fence post when I was nine, and put his mouth to it.
The first night we spent together, he'd found it in the dark with his fingers and asked what happened.
After I told him, he'd kissed it, like it was something the world owed an apology for. He still did. Every time.
"You're shaking," he said against my skin.
"It's cold."
"It's not cold."
I thought about the junk drawer, the fold of tape under the menus. If I told him to stop, he'd ask why, and I would have to say it out loud.
I didn't tell him to stop. I pulled him up by the shoulders instead.
He dragged the comforter over us both. His skin was hot everywhere mine was cool, his weight settling onto me, familiar, exact, one knee nudging mine apart the way it had a thousand times. I heard myself make a sound I hadn't made in a while.
I knew what it felt like when a man touched you while he was somewhere else. In my twenties I'd dated one for a year who used to check his watch over my shoulder. This wasn't that.
Graham was all the way there. He braced himself on one forearm so he could watch my face, and when he pushed into me, he did it slowly, stopping when my breath caught, waiting until my hips answered before he moved again.
He said my name against my throat. He found the rhythm I liked without my having to say a word, because he'd known it for twelve years, and I hated how badly I needed that right then.
I dug my heels into the backs of his thighs to pull him deeper.
He made a rough sound into my neck and gave me what I was asking for.
When I came apart, he caught my wrists, holding them loosely against the pillow, kissing me through it slow, like he wanted to be there for every second of it.
A minute later his own breath went ragged.
His hips stuttered against mine, and he dropped his forehead onto my shoulder with a groan, his back damp under my hands.
For a while neither of us moved. I felt his heart slow down against my chest.
Afterward we lay tangled in the sheets. The window was open an inch, letting a thin line of cold air across my feet.
"Remember the radiator," he said. "On Passyunk."
"The one that screamed."
"It didn't scream. It sang."
"It screamed, Graham. Like someone was being murdered. Mrs. Pellegrino called the police."
He laughed into my neck, his hand moving in lazy circles on my stomach.
I'm wrong, I thought. Whatever it is, I'm wrong. A man doesn't touch his wife like that while he's thinking about someone else.
I fell asleep with his arm across me.
The phone woke me. It was face down on his nightstand, buzzing against the wood, not the long drone of a call but two short pulses, then two more. The pattern he'd set for texts marked urgent.
The clock on my side said 12:40.
Graham was already rolling away from me. The mattress lifted as he reached for the phone, and the screen lit his face blue. I kept my eyes almost shut and read the name at the top through my lashes.
L.
Just the letter. No photo.
He typed something with his thumb. Then the phone started vibrating in his hand with a call, and he answered before the second buzz.
"Hang on," he said, barely a breath.
He got out of bed, pulled his sweatpants off the chair, and went out of the room without turning on a light. I heard his bare feet going quietly down the stairs.
My heart was going so hard I could hear it in my ears.
The floor register by the dresser opened into the kitchen ceiling.
We'd figured that out our first winter in the house, when I could hear every word of his calls with his mother while I folded laundry.
I slid out of bed and knelt on the cold floorboards next to the grate with the sheet wrapped around me.
His voice came up through the vent, low and clipped.
"Okay. Okay. I know."
A pause.
"No. Stay right there. Don't do anything."
A longer pause.
"I know. I'm coming. Twenty minutes."
Then nothing, until the scrape of his keys coming off the hook in the mudroom.
I was back in bed on my side, facing the window, before he came upstairs. He turned on the closet light, pulled on jeans and a sweatshirt, then sat on the edge of the bed to put on socks. The mattress tilted under him.
"Nay." He touched my shoulder. "You awake?"
I rolled over and made my voice thick. "What's going on?"
"Water main break at the Germantown building. Eddie can't find the shutoff. The first floor's flooding."
"It's twelve-forty."
"Pipes don't check the time." He leaned down to kiss my temple. "Go back to sleep. I'll be a couple hours."
"Can't Eddie call a plumber?"
"He did. They're an hour out. I know where the valve is."
He did know where the valve was. He knew where every valve was in every building he owned. That part was true.
The front door locked behind him. I heard the Range Rover's engine turn over in the drive, watched its headlights swing across the ceiling, then lay there in the dark with the sheets still damp from us.
An hour ago he'd been inside me, saying my name like it was the only word he knew. Now he was driving somewhere in the middle of the night because someone named L had texted twice, then called, then been told to stay right there.
At 2:15 I gave up and went downstairs. The kitchen was clean, the wine bottle in the recycling, the shrimp pan upside down on the drying rack. I made a cup of chamomile I didn't drink, then sat at the island until it went cold and grew a skin on top.
At 3:34 the Range Rover came back up the drive.
By the time he came upstairs I was in bed with my eyes shut. He undressed in the dark and didn't shower. When he slid in behind me, careful not to jostle the mattress, his body gave off cold like a stone pulled out of a stream.
He didn't reach for me. After a while his breathing slowed. After a longer while, mine still hadn't.