Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
NAOMI
I heard him moving around the kitchen, the fridge, a cabinet, the tap running a long time. Then his feet on the stairs, slow, like each one weighed something.
He came in with his tie already off, balled in his fist, dropped it on the dresser and said "Hey" without looking at me.
"Hey."
In the bathroom he brushed his teeth, spat, rinsed, spat again. The toilet flushed. The light clicked off. He got into bed on his side, turning off his lamp, and the mattress dipped under him as he settled onto his back.
I put my book on the nightstand and turned off my lamp too.
We lay there in the dark. The old radiator under the window ticked as it cooled. I could hear him breathing, not sleep-breathing, just the careful breathing of someone holding himself very still.
I didn't know what I was trying to prove. Maybe that I could still reach him. Maybe that the man who'd kissed the scar on my hip three weeks ago was still in this bed. Maybe I just wanted to know for sure, the way you press on a bruise to see if it's still there.
I rolled onto my side and slid my hand across the cold strip of sheet between us, then laid it flat on his stomach over his T-shirt. His muscles tightened under my palm.
I moved my hand lower.
He caught my wrist. He didn't grab it. He just closed his fingers around it gently and held it where it was.
"Nay," he said. "I'm wiped."
"Okay."
"It's not—" He let out a long breath. "I'm just so tired. Not tonight."
He lifted my hand off his stomach and brought it to his mouth, kissing my knuckles, a short, dry kiss, like a man signing for a package. Then he put my hand back on my own side of the bed and rolled over to face the window.
In twelve years, Graham had never once said not tonight. I'd said it plenty, the way anyone does, with a migraine, or after a site walk in August, or the night my grandmother died. He had never said it to me.
I lay there with my hand where he'd put it.
He's thinking about her. I didn't want to think it, but it came anyway, cold, flat, certain as a stone. He couldn't be with me because his head was on Pine Street, because the only woman he wanted to touch tonight was the one who said he's been there for me.
After a long time his breathing changed. Mine never did.
In the morning he'd left before I woke up. There was coffee in the pot, gone bitter from sitting on the burner.
All day Thursday, I thought about ten o'clock.
At 9:58 I was in a design review with the parks department. At 10:00 I checked my phone under the table. Nothing. At 10:15 I excused myself to the bathroom and stood at the sink with the water running, not washing my hands.
I went home at five. I took the folded page out of my laptop bag and opened it on the kitchen table, pressing the creases flat with the side of my hand. Then I sat down across from it with a glass of water.
Graham came in at 6:50 and saw the paper before he saw me.
He stood in the mudroom doorway with his keys still in his hand. His face was gray, there was a small brown stain on his shirt cuff, coffee maybe, and he looked like he hadn't slept in a week.
"What's that?" he said.
"Read it."
He came over to the table but didn't sit.
He put one hand flat on the wood to read standing up, and I watched his eyes go down the column.
September 13, porch. September 17, Grindstone, oat cortado, deadbolt, box cutter.
September 19, KITC. September 22, L, 12:40, Eddie.
September 29, Walnut. October 3, $7,800, 1411 Pine, keys issued two, 37 minutes, fig. October 10, Thursday at ten.
When he got to the bottom, he just stood there.
"You followed me," he said.
"I drove to an address on a lease you signed."
"You sat outside her apartment."
"For thirty-seven minutes. It's on there."
He pulled out a chair and sat down heavily, elbows on the table, fingertips pressed hard into his eyes.
"I'm not sleeping with your sister," he said into his hands.
"Then tell me what this is."
"I can't."
"Graham."
"I can't, Naomi." He dropped his hands, and his eyes were bloodshot. "You don't understand what you're asking me."
"I understand exactly what I'm asking. I'm asking why you've been lying to me for a month."
"Longer," he said.
It was out before he could stop it, and I watched him hear himself say it.
"How much longer?"
He didn't answer.
"How much longer?"
"July." His jaw worked. "She came to my office in July."
July. We'd gone to the shore for a week in July, and he'd taken calls on the balcony of the rental house. I'd thought it was the King of Prussia lender.
"Three months," I said.
"Yes."
"Three months of this." I put my finger on the page. "And you still won't tell me."
"She asked me not to." His voice went up.
"She sat in my office and asked me not to.
I gave her my word. It's not mine. It's her life.
Do you know what today was? No, you don't, and I can't tell you.
I've spent all day holding something together with my bare hands, and I come home to this.
" He flicked the edge of the paper. "You wrote it up like a site report. "
"Because I'm trying to figure out what's going on in my own house."
"You're asking me to betray someone who trusted me."
"I'm your wife."
He looked at me, and for a moment I could see it right there behind his teeth, everything he wasn't saying. Then he closed his mouth and looked away, at the dark window over the sink.
"I know you are," he said quietly. "That's why I'm asking you to trust me."
"You don't get to ask me that. Not with this on the table."
"She said you'd do this."
Neither of us moved.
"Do what?"
He shook his head, and I could tell he knew he'd made a mistake. He got up from the chair.
"Do what, Graham? What did my sister tell you I'd do?"
"Nothing. Forget it."
"Make a list? Show up with a spreadsheet?" My voice was shaking now, and I couldn't make it stop. "Be so good about it for the rest of her life?"
He stared at me, trying to work out how I knew those words.
"That's what she said to me," I said. "At her work, on Tuesday. You two have the same lines now."
He picked up his keys again. His hands weren't steady.
"I'm going to sleep in the guest room," he said. "I don't want to say anything else I'll regret."
"You're choosing her."
"I'm not choosing anybody. I'm keeping a promise."
"To her."
"Yes, to her. Because she asked me for one thing." He was in the doorway to the hall now, half in the dark. "You never ask me for anything, Naomi. You never have. You don't need anything from me. You'd be fine. You'd be fine if I dropped dead tomorrow. You'd have the funeral catered by Tuesday."
He went upstairs. The guest room door didn't slam, because Graham didn't slam doors. It closed with a small, firm click, the way you close the door on a room you're done with.
I sat at the kitchen table for a long time with the page in front of me, all those dates and facts. I'd been so careful to write down only what was true.
I folded it back along its creases, into quarters and then eighths. It had gone soft from being carried.
You never ask me for anything.
I turned the folded page over in my hands and tried to think of the last thing I'd asked anyone for, in this house or the one in Havertown. Nothing came.
I got up and put the paper in the junk drawer, on top of the fold of tape with his handwriting on it. Then I went upstairs to our room. The bed was enormous. I lay down on my side of it anyway.