Chapter 24
Chapter Twenty-Four
NAOMI
Imoved home the Sunday before Thanksgiving.
Tess and Ben carried my things out to the car, my duffel, three bags of sweaters that had somehow multiplied at their house. Frijol tried to climb into the last bag. Tess lifted him out by the armpits, and a month ago we would all have laughed.
In their driveway in Mount Airy, Tess closed my trunk and kept her hand flat on it.
"I'm going to say it one more time," she said. "Then I'll shut up."
"Tess."
"He moved out and left you the house. That's good. That's a good thing he did." She looked at me across the roof of the car. "It's not the same as being a different person. Don't go home because he was finally decent for three weeks."
"I'm going home because it's my house."
"I know. I just?—"
"Stop telling me why I'm doing things."
It came out loud enough that Ben, halfway up the porch steps with Frijol, stopped walking.
Tess took her hand off the trunk.
"Okay," she said.
She didn't hug me goodbye. She stood in the driveway with her arms crossed against the cold and raised one hand as I backed out. I thought about that all the way down Germantown Avenue.
The house was cold when I let myself in. There was a sticky note on the thermostat in Graham's block capitals, TURN ME UP, so I did.
In the fridge there were eggs, the Lancaster ones with feathers stuck to the shells, a new bottle of the green hot sauce, clementines. No note. Nothing on the counter, nothing on my pillow. He hadn't left me one thing that asked me for anything.
I stood with the refrigerator door open until it beeped at me.
That night I slept badly. The house was too big, too quiet, and the radiators ticked. At three I caught myself listening for his breathing on the other side of the bed. I got up and made rooibos, then drank it at the kitchen window, looking out at the black garden.
My mother called Monday at lunch.
"Graham came to see me," she said, before I'd even said hello. "Last Sunday. Without calling."
"Okay."
"He said some very unkind things, Naomi. He sat right there on my couch and said things I don't think a son-in-law should say to anyone."
I got up and closed my office door.
"Did he say it was his fault?" I asked. "My birthday?"
There was a long pause. In the background I could hear her game show, somebody winning something, applause.
"That's not the point," my mother said.
Then, out of nowhere, she asked what the weather was like at my house. I said cold. She said it was cold in Havertown too. We talked about the weather for twenty minutes, and right before she hung up she said, "Your sister won't tell me where she's living. You always did take her side."
I sat at my desk for a while afterward holding the phone, trying to decide whether that was funny.
On Tuesday night, at five past ten, the doorbell rang.
I was on the couch in my socks with a site plan. I went to the door expecting Graham, even though he'd never once come over without asking.
It was Lila, standing on the front step with a duffel bag over her shoulder while an Uber pulled away behind her down the hill, brake lights going red at the corner. Her hair was dirty. She had the Temple hoodie on under her quilted coat, and her face looked gray under the porch light.
"Can I stay here?" she said. "A few nights. Just a few. I can't sleep there. I haven't slept since Sunday. You have the room."
Before I'd even decided anything, I was already making lists in my head: clean sheets on the guest bed, a towel, who I'd call in the morning, what needed fixing.
I stepped back, and she came in.
In the kitchen I made her tea, rooibos, no milk. She held the mug with both hands and didn't drink it.
"Sunday night I thought his car was outside," she said. "On Pine Street. The Audi, down at the corner. I called 911 like I'm supposed to. They came and drove around. They said there's no car. Then they left. Then I looked out again, and I thought it was back."
"Was it?"
"I don't know." Her voice broke. "That's the worst part. I don't know. I can't tell what's real anymore. He used to tell me I made things up. Maybe I do."
"You don't."
"You don't know that."
I didn't. I sat down across from her.
"I called Graham," she said. "Four times. It just rang and rang. Did you know he has a rule now? His phone goes silent at nine. Like I'm a telemarketer."
I held very still.
"Then he called me back. After midnight." She wiped her nose on her sleeve. "He drove down."
Everything in me went cold and clear.
"He came over," I said.
"He sat outside. In his car. Double-parked with his flashers on for, like, three hours. He wouldn't come up. I begged him. He made me call a hotline like I was a stranger." She laughed, a wet, furious sound. "I was so mad at him I hung up on him."
I looked at my sister.
I'd heard her tell me nothing was going on before, in a showroom, with a broken tile between us.
He's just been there for me. She's doing it again, I thought.
She's covering for him, the way they covered for each other all fall.
Of course he went up. He drove across the city at midnight.
Nobody drives across the city at midnight to sit in a car.
"He didn't tell me," I said.
Lila looked up, wide-eyed.
"You didn't know?"
"No."
"Oh." She put the mug down. "Oh, Nay. I thought—he said he tells you everything now. I thought you knew."
I didn't say anything. I couldn't.
"I got the job, by the way," Lila said into the silence. It came out strangely, like something she'd practiced for a better night. "On Monday. The design firm. I threw up in their bathroom before the interview and then went in anyway. They called this morning."
"Li. That's great."
"It's great," she agreed, and started crying again.
"I have a job with health insurance, and I can't sleep in my own apartment.
I set up the money for you, too. Two hundred a month, starting December first. I did that part.
" She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes.
"So can I stay? Just till after Thanksgiving? "
I wanted to say yes so badly my jaw ached.
"Tonight," I said.
She lowered her hands.
"Just tonight?"
"Tonight. The guest room's made up. Tomorrow you call Denise about whatever would let you sleep in your own apartment. A camera. A new lock. Whatever it takes."
"You sound exactly like him."
"Good."
"So I had two people," Lila said, "and now I have zero."
"You have me." My voice wasn't steady. "You have me at lunch. On the phone. At Mom's. At my birthday, if you want to come. You don't get me instead of a hotline at midnight. I'm not doing that. I did it for thirty years."
She stared at me. Then she got up, grabbed her duffel, and went upstairs without saying good night. The guest room door shut hard enough to rattle a picture frame in the hall.
I sat at the island. It was 11:38.
When I opened my thread with Graham, my last message was still sitting there from October. I read your message.
Lila's in my guest room, I typed. She says you were on Pine Street at one in the morning on Sunday.
The phone rang in my hand before I'd even put it down. I declined it, and a text came instead.
I was. I double-parked outside. I didn't go up. I made her call Denise's line. I stayed until three.
Then another.
I should have told you that night. I told myself I'd tell you in person. I wrote a text Monday morning and didn't send it.
A minute later, a third.
That's what I did in July. I know it is.
I read them all twice.
Did you go up? I wrote.
No.
Lila said you didn't.
She's telling you the truth.
She told me the truth in October too, I typed. Technically.
The dots came up and stayed up a long time, then went away without anything coming through.
I typed I don't know if I believe either of you, looked at it, and sent it.
That's fair, he wrote.
I turned the phone face down and sat there in the kitchen until the radiator stopped ticking.
Lila came down at seven the next morning with her duffel already on her shoulder, her eyes swollen, her face scrubbed.
"I called Denise at six-thirty," she said.
"Got her voicemail. She called me back at quarter to seven.
She says the landlord has to let them put a camera on the vestibule.
She's calling him herself, and if he says no, she knows somebody at L&I.
" She pulled her coat on. "I did it before you could tell me to. "
"Okay."
"I'm still mad at you."
"Okay."
"I'm madder at him." She zipped up her coat. "I wanted him to come up so bad, Nay. I stood at that window for three hours watching his flashers blink. He really didn't come up."
She went out to the curb to wait for her ride. She didn't hug me. I stood in the doorway in my socks until the car came, and for a while after it left.
On Thanksgiving, in Tess's kitchen, while Ben carved the turkey, I told her.
"So he lied again," Tess said.
"He didn't tell me for two days."
"Nay. You're the one who taught me that's lying." She wasn't looking at me. She was spooning cranberry sauce into a bowl very carefully. "I'm not trying to be right. I'm really not."
But her shoulders had come down half an inch when I said two days. I saw it, and she saw me see it.
"You don't get to be glad about this," I said quietly.
"I'm not glad."
"Okay."
We carried the food out. Ben had put too much cumin in the stuffing. Mateo said maybe six words. All through dinner I kept my phone in my back pocket, reaching back to check it. It didn't buzz once.
He'd said he wouldn't reach out until I did. I hated that he was keeping that one.