20. Rae
RAE
I sat on Enid's porch with my coffee going cold in my hands.
The morning was already warm, the air thick and still, and I had been sitting there long enough that my neighbor had come out twice to water her flowers and hadn't said anything either time.
She knew I'd talk when I was ready. Or maybe she knew I wouldn't be ready at all and was just waiting me out.
"I can't stop thinking about him," I said.
Enid kept watering, the spray from her hose catching the light. She didn't turn around. "Nash."
"Yeah."
"That's not surprising."
I twisted my fingers around the mug, then caught myself rubbing my left ring finger with my thumb, touching the bare skin where the ring used to sit.
The habit wouldn't break even though the divorce had been final for over a month now.
"I keep going over what he said. At the storage unit. And I don't know what to do with it."
"What did he say?"
"That there was never an affair." The words still felt strange in my mouth, like I was trying them on to see if they fit. "That he turned Adriana down and fired her. That she lied to hurt him."
Enid turned off the hose. She coiled it neatly and set it down, then came over and sat in the chair across from me. Her face was calm, patient. "Do you believe him?"
"I don't know." My throat went tight. "I want to. God, I want to. But I'm terrified it's just another version of the same thing, you know? That he's different now and then in two months or six months he'll go right back to what he was, and I'll have been stupid enough to fall for it."
"What would prove it's real?"
The question landed hard. I stared at her, my pulse kicking up, because I didn't have an answer. I opened my mouth and closed it again, frustrated with myself. Enid just waited, her hands folded in her lap, like she had all the time in the world for me to figure it out.
I couldn't.
I started to say something about time, about consistency, but the words tangled up before I could get them out.
I wanted proof but I didn't know what shape it would take or how long I'd need to see it.
My throat felt tight. I hated not knowing my own mind, hated that I was sitting here unable to name the one thing that would make the difference.
"I don't know," I said finally.
She nodded. She didn't tell me what to think or what I should be looking for, and somehow that made it worse. If she'd just told me, I could have agreed or argued, but instead she let the question sit there between us like something I'd have to carry on my own.
I left an hour later, my chest tight and my mind going in circles.
I didn't want to go home. The little house was forty minutes away and it felt too far and too close at the same time, so I drove to the field instead.
Ruben's shop was open, the big hangar doors rolled back, and I parked in the gravel lot and went inside without thinking about why.
The place smelled like oil and metal and old concrete. Ruben was at the workbench with a carburetor in pieces in front of him, and he glanced up when I came in.
"Didn't know you were coming by today," he said.
"I wasn't planning on it."
He looked at me for a second, then went back to the carburetor. Ruben never hovered. If I wanted to talk, I'd talk. If I didn't, he'd let me work in silence, and that was one of the reasons I'd been coming here since I was nineteen.
I picked up a wrench and started tinkering with a fuel line that didn't need tinkering, just to give my hands something to do.
My mind was still back on Enid's porch, turning over the question I couldn't answer.
The shop was quiet except for the clink of metal on metal and the low hum of the radio in the corner.
Then I heard a truck pull up outside.
Footsteps on the concrete. I didn't look up, figuring it was a customer, but then a voice I wasn't expecting said, "Rae."
I turned around. Elias McCallister stood in the doorway, backlit by the sun, his hands in his pockets.
I hadn't been alone with Nash's brother once in the entire time I'd known him.
He'd been at the wedding and he'd been polite and distant, the same way he was polite and distant with everyone who wasn't Nash.
Seeing him here, now, made my stomach flip.
"Elias."
He stepped inside, glancing at Ruben, who nodded at him and then went back to his work like this wasn't strange at all. Maybe it wasn't. Maybe Elias came by all the time and I just didn't know about it.
"Can we talk?" Elias asked.
My throat tightened. "About what?"
"About my brother."
I set the wrench down carefully, like if I moved too fast something would break. "Okay."
Elias crossed his arms. He didn't look uncomfortable exactly, but he didn't look like he wanted to be here either. "Everything he told you is true."
I blinked. "What?"
"There was no affair. He turned Adriana Moreau down at the penthouse and fired her the next day. Stripped her contract, her stake, everything. Then he told the industry why, and she's done." He said it flat, no drama, like he was reciting facts from a report. "That part's true."
My pulse was loud in my ears. I wanted to sit down but there was nowhere to sit except the floor, so I just stood there, gripping the edge of the workbench. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you should know."
"He already told me."
"Yeah, and you didn't believe him." Elias's voice didn't change. He wasn't accusing me or defending Nash. He was just stating it. "So I'm telling you. It's true."
I swallowed hard. My hands were shaking and I pressed them flat against the workbench to hide it. "What else?"
Elias hesitated for the first time since he'd walked in. Then he said, "He gave up the airline."
The words didn't make sense. I stared at him, waiting for the rest of the sentence, the part that would explain what he actually meant. "What?"
"He handed his role over to me. Chief executive. The whole thing. As of yesterday."
The air went out of my lungs. I couldn't breathe for a second, couldn't think, because the airline was the thing Nash had chosen over me for seven years. The airline was the reason we'd fallen apart in the first place. And he'd given it away.
Without telling me.
My mind went backwards through it. All those months living out of hotels, waiting for the next thing to calm down.
The weekends he didn't take. The dinners he missed because something came up, because the board needed him, because Adriana had a question that couldn't wait.
The promise that we'd settle back into the little house once the expansion was done, once the new routes were established, once the next crisis passed.
The yellow room I'd painted myself, waiting.
He'd always said it was temporary. That the airline would calm down after the next thing. It never did.
And now it was just gone. He'd handed it over and hadn't said a word.
I'd been standing right in front of him at the storage unit yesterday and he'd looked at me and talked about the house and never once mentioned that the thing I'd lost him to didn't exist anymore.
The loss felt stranger now, not simpler.
He hadn't even used it to buy anything back from me.
"Why?" I managed.
Elias shrugged. "You'd have to ask him. But he did it."
I pressed my hand to my chest because my heart was racing and I needed to feel something solid. "He didn't say anything."
"No. He wouldn't." Elias looked at me, his expression unreadable. "That's not why he did it."
I didn't know what to say to that. I just stood there, my mind scrambling to catch up, trying to fit this new piece into the picture I'd been carrying around. It didn't fit. It broke everything I thought I understood.
"He got rid of Adriana himself," Elias said. "Didn't wait for the board. Didn't ask anyone's permission. Just did it. Fired her, told everyone why, and made sure she couldn't come back."
"Jesus," I breathed.
Elias nodded once. Then he looked past me to Ruben, who was still at the workbench, and said, "You want to tell her the rest?"
I turned around. Ruben set down the part he'd been holding and wiped his hands on a rag, his face calm. He met my eyes and said, "He's been coming here."
"What?"
"Nash. Every week since April. Sometimes twice a week.
" Ruben's voice was steady, matter-of-fact, the same way he talked about fuel mixtures and engine tolerances.
"Asking questions about your work. What you do.
How the planes are maintained. What goes into an inspection. He wanted to understand it."
My chest tightened. I couldn't picture it — Nash in this shop, standing where I was standing now, talking to Ruben about fuel lines and hydraulics and all the things he'd never cared about before. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Wasn't my business to tell. He didn't ask me to keep it quiet, but he didn't make a show of it either. Just came in, asked his questions, and left." Ruben tilted his head, considering. "He took notes."
"Notes," I repeated.
"Yeah. Had a little notebook. Wrote things down. Asked me once how long it took you to qualify and whether I thought you were good at it."
"What did you say?"
"I told him you were the best I'd trained." Ruben's mouth twitched, almost a smile. "He already knew that. He just wanted to hear me say it."
I turned away, my throat burning, because I couldn't handle the image of Nash standing in this shop, writing down the details of my work in a notebook like it mattered.
Like I mattered. My eyes stung and I blinked hard, trying to get a grip, but my hands were shaking again and I couldn't make them stop.
"He asked about the Cessna you rebuilt," Ruben said. "Wanted to know what was wrong with it when you started and how you fixed it. I told him it was a mess when it came in, that most people would've scrapped it, but you didn't. You brought it back."
I pressed my fingers to my mouth. I remembered that plane. It had taken me six months and I'd done most of it here, in this shop, under Ruben's supervision. Nash had never asked about it. Not once. Not when I was working on it and not after.
But he'd asked Ruben.
"How many times?" I asked, my voice cracking.
"Twelve, maybe fifteen. I didn't count." Ruben folded the rag and set it aside. "Last time was two weeks ago."
Two weeks ago. While we were still divorced. While I still thought he'd slept with Adriana. While I was trying to convince myself I was done.
He'd been here, learning my work.
I turned back to Elias. He was watching me, his expression unreadable, but he didn't look smug or satisfied. He just looked tired. "I'm not asking you to do anything with this," he said. "I just thought you should know."
"Why?" My voice was barely a whisper.
"Because he won't tell you himself. And you deserve the facts."
I nodded, even though I wasn't sure I was agreeing to anything. Elias pushed off the wall and headed for the door, and I just stood there, rooted to the spot, my mind spinning.
"Elias," I called after him.
He stopped and turned around.
"Thank you."
He nodded once. Then he was gone, the sound of his truck starting up and pulling away, and it was just me and Ruben again.
Ruben went back to the carburetor like nothing had happened, and I stood there with my heart pounding and my hands still shaking, trying to process what I'd just heard. The airline. The shop. Adriana. All of it.
The change was real.
I didn't decide it. I didn't think it through or weigh the evidence or make a list of pros and cons.
It just settled into my chest like something I'd been holding my breath for and could finally let go.
The change was real. He'd given up the airline.
He'd learned my work. He'd gotten rid of Adriana himself, without waiting, without asking anyone's permission.
And he hadn't told me any of it.
"I have to go," I said.
Ruben looked up. "Drive safe."
I was already halfway to the door. My keys were in my pocket and my hands were still shaking but I didn't care.
I got in the truck and pulled out of the gravel lot, my tires kicking up dust, and I drove towards Cibolo Heights faster than I should have.
The little house was forty minutes away and I couldn't get there fast enough.
My chest was tight and my throat was burning and I kept seeing Nash in Ruben's shop with a notebook in his hands, writing down the things I cared about because he wanted to understand.
The road stretched out in front of me, long and straight, and I gripped the wheel hard enough that my knuckles went white.
I didn't know what I was going to say when I got there. I didn't know if I was ready. But I was going anyway, my foot heavy on the gas, the little house pulling me forward like gravity.
I was still ten minutes out when the sun started to sink.