Chapter 25
Chapter Twenty-Five
GRAHAM
It didn't make a sound. It just lay there glowing. Lila Hale.
I was at the sink rinsing a plate. I watched it ring out and go dark, then light up again with a voicemail. I dried my hands and hit play.
"It's me. There's somebody on my stairs. It's probably the guy from 2F, he comes home late. It's probably him. I don't know. I'm sorry. I know it's after nine. I'm sorry."
My keys were in the bowl by the door, and my hand was on them before the message was over. It just went there.
I stood there holding them.
Then I put them back in the bowl, picked the phone up again, and called my wife.
It rang three times. When she answered, her voice was thick with sleep. I'd woken her up.
"Graham?"
"Lila just called," I said. "Eleven-seventeen. She thinks somebody's on her stairs. She thinks it's probably a neighbor. I haven't called her back. I'm not going over there. I'm about to text her to call Denise's line. I wanted to tell you before I did anything."
I could hear her sit up, the sheets moving.
"Did you call Denise?" she said.
"Not yet. You first."
She was quiet even longer.
"Call Denise," she said. "Text Lila. Then call me back."
"It's late. You were asleep. You don't have to?—"
"Graham." Her voice was wide awake now. "I'll decide what costs me sleep. Call me back."
"Okay."
I texted Lila. Call the hotline now. I'm not coming. Naomi knows.
She answered fast.
ok
Then I called the hotline myself, because Denise had told me once that family could, and I told a tired guy named Luis what I knew. He said they'd reach out to her. I thanked him, then sat on the arm of the couch and waited with the phone in both hands.
Twenty-two minutes later Lila texted.
nobody's there now. i looked through the peephole. nobody. i don't know if anybody was.
Lock the bar anyway, I wrote.
I called Naomi back at 11:52.
"I don't know," I said. "Nobody's there now. She doesn't know if anyone was."
"Okay."
Neither of us said anything for a second.
"Thank you for calling me," Naomi said.
"Go back to sleep."
"I wasn't asleep. I haven't been asleep."
I didn't know what to say to that. She didn't hang up. Neither did I, and we stayed like that on either end of the line for maybe half a minute, listening to each other not talk. Then she said good night and was gone.
The next Wednesday she texted.
Walk with me Sunday? Forbidden Drive. Valley Green lot. 10.
I got there at 9:20. The creek was high and brown from a week of rain, with a skin of ice along the slow edges. Runners in tights were stretching against the split-rail fence, their breath going up in clouds.
She pulled in at 9:58, getting out in her long gray coat and a green knit hat I'd never seen before. She stopped about four feet away from me.
"You're early," she said.
"Since nine-twenty."
"Of course."
We walked north on the gravel toward the covered bridge, not touching. For a long time neither of us said anything. A man went by on a big chestnut horse, and as it passed, the horse blew out a long breath like it was tired of all of us.
"I thought you went up," Naomi said.
I looked over at her, but she was looking straight ahead.
"That night on Pine Street. When Lila said you didn't, I thought she was covering for you. She's done it before, standing in a showroom looking me right in the eye." She pushed her hands deeper into her pockets. "I lay awake all night sure you'd gone up those stairs."
"I know."
"I was wrong about that."
"You weren't wrong that I didn't tell you."
"No," she said. "I wasn't wrong about that."
The gravel crunched. The creek was loud on our left.
"Why'd you call me Friday?" she said. "Before you did anything."
"Because the first time, I told myself I'd tell you when there was a better time." I made myself keep looking at her. "There was never going to be a better time. There wasn't one in July either. There's now, or there's later, and later's where I hide things."
She stopped walking and turned to face me in the middle of the path. A couple with a golden retriever went around us, giving us the look people give two grown-ups having a serious conversation on a trail.
"I need to hear you say what you did," she said. "Not the dates. I've got the dates. I've got four pages of dates."
"I lied to you for three months and let you think the worst of it. I let her tell me who you were, and then I cooked it for you. Then last month, after four pages promising I'd never do it again, I sat outside her building at one in the morning and didn't tell you."
Her eyes had filled up. She didn't wipe them.
"The Pine Street stuff I understand," she said. "The lease. The lawyer. I'd have done the lease. What I can't get past is the rest. Why did you stop knowing me?"
"Because she kept asking."
She waited.
"Every day she called with something. What do I say to the lawyer.
Is this apartment safe. Will you come. She needed me to learn her, so I did.
I knew her coffee order because she called me crying from a coffee shop.
I knew about her stomach because she threw up in my car.
And you never called. You never asked me for anything, so in my head you were fine.
You were the one part of my life I didn't have to work at. I thought I had you memorized."
My voice went rough, and I let it.
"I knew everything about what she needed because she kept asking me. I stopped asking what you needed because I assumed I already knew."
Naomi looked away at the water, and a tear ran down the side of her face into the collar of her coat.
"I liked it," I said. "I have to tell you that too, or I'll just do it again. I liked being needed that much. I liked being the guy who drove across the city at midnight. I still like it. Friday night my hand was on my keys before I even knew I'd moved."
"But you put them down."
"That time."
She laughed. It wasn't a happy laugh, but it was a real one.
"Did you ever want her?" she said. "I have to ask it out here. Where I can see your face."
"No. Never. Not for one second."
She looked at me a long time. Then she nodded once.
We crossed the covered bridge, the boards slick with wet leaves. On the far side the trail climbed through bare trees to a bench at the top. She sat down on one end, and I sat on the other.
She took off her hat, and her hair was full of static.
"I don't ask for things," she said. "You were right about that. Lila was right about that." She turned the hat over in her lap. "I quit asking when I was a kid. It didn't make anybody remember."
"Nay."
"I woke up Friday when you called, and the first thing I thought was, he's calling to tell me he's going over there.
And I was already getting ready to say it's fine.
I had it right in my mouth." She shook her head.
"I'm going to keep doing that for a long time.
You're going to have to not believe me sometimes. "
"Okay."
"I'm not saying come home."
"I know."
"I'm not saying anything yet."
We sat there. A cardinal landed on the path, hopped twice, and was gone.
"Saturday," Naomi said. "Come to the house. Ten in the morning."
"Okay."
"You can cook for me."
I had to look down at my hands for a second.
"Okay," I said. And then, because it came up out of me like a reflex, the old one: "What do you want me to?—"
I stopped.
She looked at me sideways. She'd watched me stop.
"I'll ask you Saturday," I said.
She put her hat back on and stood up. Going back down the hill, the path was slick. She reached for the railing on the covered bridge and missed. Her hand caught my sleeve instead, and she didn't let go until we were across.