17. Nash
NASH
The padlock stuck on the third try. I twisted the key harder than I needed to and the tumblers finally gave. The metal door rattled up on its track and the smell hit me first—dust and cardboard and years of sitting still.
Everything from the first house was in there. I'd signed the lease on this unit the same week I'd handed Rae the keys to the penthouse, thinking I'd sort through it eventually. That was two years ago now, maybe longer. I hadn't been back since the day the movers packed it in.
I stepped inside and pulled the string on the overhead bulb.
Yellow light spilled across stacked boxes, furniture wrapped in plastic, the couch we'd bought together at that secondhand place off South Congress.
Rae had loved that couch. I'd thought it was ugly as hell but I'd loaded it into the truck anyway because she'd sat down on it and smiled.
The boxes nearest the door were labeled in her handwriting. Kitchen – mugs. Books – paperback. Linens. Her letters were small and neat, the kind of writing that didn't waste space. I picked up the one marked living room and carried it out to the truck.
It took me three trips to realize I didn't have a plan. I was just moving things, the way I'd been moving things for weeks now. Bringing the house back to what it should've been. Fixing what I'd let fall apart.
The porch didn't creak anymore. I'd pulled up every board that sagged, replaced the ones too far gone to save, sanded the rest until my shoulders ached.
The trim was painted. The windows were clean.
The mailbox stood straight for the first time since we'd moved in.
I'd told Rae I'd fix it seven years ago and I never had.
I set a box down in the truck bed and wiped the back of my hand across my forehead. It was hot as hell and I'd forgotten water. Again. I turned back to the storage unit and that's when I saw the box in the far corner, half-hidden behind the old armchair.
It wasn't labeled.
I knew what it was anyway.
My hands went cold. I stood there in the doorway with sweat running down my spine and my heart doing something I couldn't name, and I didn't move. Didn't want to move. Didn't want to know for sure.
But I walked over to it. Pulled the chair aside. The box was taped shut and the tape had gone yellow at the edges. My hands were shaking when I crouched down and peeled it back. The cardboard gave way and I opened the flaps.
A crib mobile, still in its packaging. The image on the front showed it hanging over a white crib, stars and moons turning slow circles. Underneath that, a stack of board books about animals. A lamp shaped like an elephant. Two folded baby blankets, pale green, soft as anything I'd ever touched.
We'd bought all of it in one afternoon. I remembered that now, even though I'd shoved it down so far I thought I'd buried it for good.
Rae had been twelve weeks along and we'd gone to that baby store near the old house because she wanted to see what was there.
Just to look, she'd said. We weren't supposed to buy anything yet.
She'd picked up the mobile and turned it over in her hands, reading the back of the box.
I'd told her to get it. She'd laughed and said it was too early, we didn't even know if it was a boy or a girl.
I'd said it didn't matter, we'd need one either way.
She'd put it in the cart. Then the books.
Then the blankets. I remembered her folding one of the blankets against her chest, her fingers smoothing the fabric like she was already imagining holding someone small enough to need it.
I sat back on my heels and something in my chest cracked wide open.
We'd lost the baby two weeks later.
God, I hadn't let myself think that in two years.
Hadn't let the words form. But they were there now, clear and sharp and unavoidable.
We'd lost the baby. Rae had been cramping that morning in the hotel room in Denver and by that night it was over, and I hadn't been there.
I'd been in meetings. Back-to-back, all damn day, because the expansion couldn't wait and the FAA inspector was only in town for forty-eight hours and I'd told myself it was just cramps, she'd be fine.
She'd called me four times. Texted me three. I didn't answer any of them.
I got back to the room at half past nine and found her on the bathroom floor.
She was curled on her side with a towel bunched under her head and her face was blank, like she'd used up everything she had just getting through it.
I'd asked if she needed a hospital. She said no.
I sat on the edge of the tub with my hand on her back and asked if she was okay.
She'd said yes.
We never talked about it again.
I picked up one of the blankets and it was still soft, still perfect, like it had been waiting all this time for someone who was never coming. My throat went tight and I shoved the blanket back in the box, but my hands were shaking and I couldn't get the flaps closed.
Jesus Christ, what the hell had I done to her?
She'd lost the baby while I was in a goddamn meeting, and then I'd kept us moving.
Kept us in hotels, temporary apartments, places that were never ours.
I told myself it was the job, the airline needed me on-site while we opened new routes.
But that wasn't the whole truth. The whole truth was I couldn't stand to stay still.
Couldn't stand to be in one place long enough to remember what we'd lost.
And Rae had never said a word.
She'd never asked me to stop. Never told me she wanted to settle. Never said she was trying to build something I kept tearing down. She'd just kept packing, kept following, kept painting the walls of every rental we moved into like maybe this one would be different.
I stood up and the bulb overhead flickered once, then steadied. The box sat open at my feet and I wanted to kick it across the room, wanted to put my fist through something, but it wasn't the box's fault. It wasn't anybody's fault but mine.
At Enid's door Rae had asked me what she wanted.
What she wanted more than anything in the world.
She'd been testing whether I knew, and I'd been so damn sure I did.
I told her she wanted to know I could take care of her.
That she'd always have what she needed. A home of her own and a life that was stable.
I'd been wrong.
What she wanted was to build a family with me.
That's what she'd been trying to do the whole time.
That's what the yellow room was for, the one she'd painted herself in the little house.
That's what she'd wanted when she came to me that Thursday morning and asked for the afternoon at Cibolo Heights, and I'd said no because I had an FAA inspection I couldn't move. Then I'd given the evening to Adriana.
Rae had wanted a family, and I'd wanted an airline.
She'd never said it out loud. Not once. Maybe she thought I already knew. Maybe she thought if she had to ask for it, it didn't count. I didn't know. I'd never know, because she was gone and I'd run out of time to figure it out.
I closed the box and shoved it back behind the chair. I couldn't take it to the house. Not yet. Maybe not ever. I didn't know what the hell I was supposed to do with a box full of things for a baby we'd never had.
My phone rang and I pulled it out, half hoping it was her. It wasn't. It was Davidson, my lawyer, and I almost didn't answer. But I did.
"Nash," he said, and his voice had that careful tone people use when they're about to tell you something you don't want to hear. "The court filed the final decree this morning. It's done."
I didn't say anything. There wasn't anything to say.
"You'll get the paperwork in a few days," he went on. "If you need anything, let me know."
I hung up without answering and stood there in the storage unit with the phone still in my hand. The decree was filed. The divorce was final. Or it would be, in a few days, once the paperwork cleared.
She was gone.
I'd figured it out too late. I knew what she wanted now—knew what I'd taken from her, what I'd broken without ever meaning to—and she wasn't there to hear it.
She didn't know I understood. She didn't know I'd spent nine weeks putting the house back together with my own goddamn hands because I finally got it.
She didn't know about the field, or the porch, or the way I kept her wedding ring in my pocket like maybe if I held onto it long enough she'd come back for it.
She didn't know any of it, and I'd lost the right to tell her.
I thought about calling her. My thumb hovered over her name in my contacts and I could see it so clearly—her phone ringing wherever she was, her seeing my name on the screen, her deciding whether or not to answer.
Maybe she would. Maybe she wouldn't. Either way, what the hell was I supposed to say?
That I'd finally worked it out? That I understood now?
It didn't matter. Understanding didn't fix anything. It didn't undo the meetings I'd prioritized or the promises I'd broken or the years I'd spent dragging her from city to city like we were running from something. It didn't bring back the baby. It didn't give her the family she'd wanted.
All it did was show me exactly how badly I'd fucked it up.
I shoved the phone back in my pocket and walked out of the storage unit.
The truck was half full of boxes and furniture, things I'd planned to bring back to the house.
Things I thought might matter. But standing there in the heat with the storage unit door rattled open behind me, I couldn't remember why any of it had seemed important.
Rae had wanted a family. I'd given her an airline and a string of temporary addresses and a husband who couldn't keep a single promise he made. And now she was gone.
I drove back to the storage unit an hour later, after I'd unloaded the truck at the house.
The boxes sat in the living room now, waiting to be unpacked, but I couldn't make myself open a single one.
I don't know why I came back. There was nothing left to move, nothing left to fix that would make a damn bit of difference.
But I went anyway, and I stood there in the open doorway staring at the box in the corner.
The baby blankets were still in there. The mobile. The books. All of it, untouched, like it had been waiting for me to finally look at it and see what I'd lost.
I pulled the door down and locked it. My hands were steadier now but my chest still felt like something had caved in, and I knew it wasn't going to stop. This wasn't something I could fix with my hands or a paintbrush or nine weeks of work I should've done seven years ago.
I'd lost her. I'd lost Rae, and I'd lost the life she'd been trying to build, and it was nobody's fault but mine.
I got in the truck and sat there with my hands on the wheel and the engine off.
The sun was setting, orange light spilling across the storage units and the empty lot and the highway beyond.
Somewhere out there Rae was living a life I wasn't part of anymore.
Maybe she was at Enid's. Maybe she was at the restaurant, talking to Ruben about the field.
Maybe she was happy, or at least on her way to it.
I hoped she was. God, I hoped she was.
But I wasn't going to see it. I wasn't going to see her again, and that was the thing I couldn't get past. Not the divorce.
Not the house. Not even the box in the corner with the things we'd bought for a baby who never came.
It was the knowing that I'd had her, I'd had everything I needed, and I'd been too damn stupid to see it.
I started the engine and pulled out of the lot. The storage unit sat behind me, locked up tight, full of things I didn't know what to do with. The house in Cibolo Heights was waiting, fixed and ready and empty.
And Rae was gone, and I had nobody to blame but myself.