2. Nell #3
"You'd see me every day," he said. He was smiling now, warm and certain. "No more waiting on weather delays. No more tentative windows. No more wondering when I'm coming home. You'd be right there."
"What about the mill?" I said.
"What about it?"
"Beckett, I run it."
"Hazel runs it," he said. "You know she does. She's been managing that floor for years."
"I own it."
"I know," he said. "And you always will. I'm not asking you to sell it. Just hand off the day-to-day. Let Hazel take it. She knows the work better than anyone."
"She worked for my mother."
"Exactly," he said. "She loves that place. She'd take care of it."
My thumb found the seam of the couch cushion and ran along it, smooth and automatic.
"You've been saying for years that we don't see enough of each other," he said. He leaned forward again, his hands open, his face earnest. "This fixes it. You'd have your own space. Your own schedule. You could come to the shows. Meet the clients. See what I'm building."
I looked at him. At his face, open and generous. At the way he was leaning toward me, waiting for me to see what he saw.
He thought he was giving me something.
He thought this was the answer.
"Beckett," I said.
"I know it's a big change," he said. "But think about it. Really think about it. You'd be part of it. All of it. Not just waiting for me to come home."
"Part of what?"
"The business," he said. "The shows. The clients. You could see what I'm building. Be there for it."
"I thought I was here for it," I said.
"You are," he said. "You've always been here for it. But you're forty minutes away from where it's happening. You've been saying for years that we don't see enough of each other. This fixes it."
I looked down at my hands. At the seam I was running my thumb along, over and over, without thinking about it.
"What about the mill?" I said again.
"Nell, the mill will be fine," he said. "Better than fine. You've built something good there. Hazel can keep it going."
"She's not the owner."
"No," he said. "You are. And you always will be. But you don't have to be on the floor every day to own it. You could visit. Once a month. Once a week if you wanted to. It's forty minutes. You could drive down whenever you needed to."
"Or I could stay here," I said.
"You could," he said. "But then nothing changes. And you've been saying for six years that you want things to change."
I looked at him. At his face, open and generous. At the way he was leaning toward me, waiting for me to see what he saw.
"Let me think about it," I said.
"Of course," he said. He stood, picking up his phone. "No pressure. I just wanted you to know it's there. That I've been thinking about it. About you. About us."
He crossed to the couch and leaned down and kissed the top of my head, the way he always did. His hand rested on my shoulder for a moment, warm and solid.
"I'm glad you waited up," he said.
Then he headed for the stairs.
I sat on the couch for a long time after he was gone.
The house was silent around me. The motion sensors had gone dark. I could hear the hum of the heating system, low and constant, the same sound it made every night. Outside, the city lights stretched out below the ridge, distant and cold.
I looked down at the shirt in my lap. At the stitches I'd spent the last hour setting, small and even, while my husband talked to another woman about a gown that would be worn once and photographed.
I ran my thumb along the buttonhole I'd just closed.
The thread was silk. The stitches were invisible from the outside.
It was the kind of work you did when you wanted something to last.
I picked it up and stood.
The workroom door was still open. I'd left it that way when I came out to wait for him. I walked down the hall and turned on the light.
The cutting table was exactly the way I'd left it. My mother's machine by the window. The good scissors in their case. The bolts of fabric I'd bought with my own money, stacked against the wall. Everything in its place.
I set the shirt down on the table and smoothed it flat. The buttonholes were done now, every one of them. The cuffs were still pinned to the sleeves. The collar was still pinned. All that was left was setting them, and I'd already decided I wasn't going to do that part on my own.
I looked at it for a long moment.
Then I walked to the door.
The lock was old, original to the house, the kind with a key that turned in the plate. Brass, tarnished from forty years of not being touched. I'd never used it. I'd never needed to. This was my room. The one space in the house that was mine. There'd never been anything to lock away.
I reached for the key. It was still in the lock, hanging from a small loop of ribbon someone had tied there decades ago. I pulled the door closed and turned the key.
The bolt slid home with a soft click.
I stood there for a moment, my hand still on the key. Then I pulled it free and held it in my palm. It was small. Cold. The ribbon was frayed at the edges.
I closed my hand around it.