Chapter 14 #2
The trail curved through a stand of palmetto palms, and a blue heron lifted off from the shallow water near the bank.
“Are you staying?” Nina asked.
Of course, she meant in the marriage. She meant in the house, in the life, in this thing that they’d built so many years ago. She’d been afraid to ask the question because she also knew Claire was probably afraid to answer.
“I’m trying,” Claire said. “I mean, we’re both trying. It’s awkward and messy. I moved back into the bedroom last week, and it felt like sleeping next to a stranger.”
“That’s an upsetting thing to say about someone you’ve been married to for twenty-six years, but it’s honest,” Harper said.
“Yeah, well, honesty is exhausting sometimes. I understand why I counted to three for so long. It’s so much easier to just say the safe thing.”
“Easier isn’t always better,” Nina said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Easy is what keeps you stuck,” Harper said under her breath.
Claire looked over at the river. Nina recognized something on her face because she herself had worn it for over two years. It was the expression of a woman standing in the middle of her life, looking at a mess and wondering if she was capable of cleaning it up or if it was just easier to walk away.
They stopped at a bluff overlooking the river to take a break. Gail tied the horses to a low branch and handed out water bottles she’d brought in her saddlebag. The three of them sat like kids, with their feet dangling over the bluff and looking at the Coosaw River spread out below.
“Harper update,” Nina said.
This had become a tradition because Harper would not volunteer personal information unprompted. You had to ask her. You had to request the Harper report, and even then, she would usually heavily edit it before delivery.
Harper took a drink of water and looked at the river. She was quiet for long enough that Nina started to wonder if she was going to decline the comment at all, which was Harper’s constitutional right and one that she liked to exercise frequently.
“I’m spending Sundays at Jordan’s,” she finally said.
Claire’s water bottle froze halfway to her mouth.
“Sundays?” Claire said, “Like as in every Sunday?”
“As in six Sundays in a row, as in it’s on my calendar with no end date, as in I have a coffee mug there and a drawer. He gave me a drawer.”
Harper said this as though she were receiving some special award, which, for Harper, she supposed, she was.
“He cleared out the bottom left drawer in his kitchen and put a box of chamomile tea in it because I mentioned one time, in passing, in a sentence I don’t even really remember finishing, that I drink chamomile in the evening.
He turned a sentence into a drawer. He said, ‘This is yours.’ And just like that, like it was nothing.
Like giving someone space in your kitchen is not the most intimate thing a person can do. ”
“It’s a drawer, Harper,” Nina said gently.
“It’s not just a drawer. It’s a declaration. A drawer says, ‘I expect you to come back.’ A drawer says, ‘There is room for you here.’ A drawer says, ‘I am planning for your presence in my life.’” She paused. “I’ve never had a drawer.”
Nina looked at Harper, sitting on the bluff in riding boots she’d bought specifically for today.
She had exchanged her silk blouse for a cotton shirt because even Harper couldn’t justify riding on horseback with a silk blouse on.
She thought about that woman who, months ago, was eating toast over the kitchen sink, who had deleted Jordan’s messages, who had kept everyone at arm’s length and thought it was strength.
That woman would have never accepted a drawer.
“Does he make you happy?” Nina asked.
Harper looked at the river again. A shrimp boat passed slowly, its nets folded.
“He cooks for me,” Harper said. “Every Sunday, he starts in the morning, and by the time I get there, the whole house smells like rosemary and garlic. And then he puts it all on the table, not on a counter, a table. He has a kitchen table, Nina, with chairs, four of them.”
Her voice had gone quiet.
“And he’s building me a table,” Harper said, “for my place, out of reclaimed wood from an old church in Georgetown that was torn down last year. He’s been working on it in the evenings. He sends me a picture every night, just the wood, where he is in the process.”
She took a breath.
“It’s the most romantic thing anyone has ever done for me, and it’s a piece of furniture.”
“It’s not just a piece of furniture,” Claire said.
Gail appeared behind them, leading the horses.
“Y’all ready to head back? We got about a mile.”
They mounted up. The trail wound through the thickest part of the forest, where the oaks were the oldest and the moss hung the heaviest. It was like riding through a tunnel of green.
Nina rode behind Claire and in front of Harper.
She watched Claire’s back, straight and steady on Biscuit, and listened to General’s breathing behind her.
She thought about the pact, the napkin, the mole, the karaoke, the freezing ocean, Elena’s casseroles, and Lucia’s honesty.
She thought about Sam’s patience, and then she thought about the two with her, Claire and Harper, who had shown up at every edge and stood beside her and jumped.
The stable appeared through the trees. They dismounted and returned the horses. Clementine nudged Nina’s shoulder with her nose before being led away. Gail said that meant she liked her, and Nina chose to believe that a horse’s opinion was just as good as anyone else’s.
They stood in the stable yard for a while, looking at the river glinting through the trees. The air smelled like horse and hay.
“Two more,” Claire said, “just two more adventures.”
“Painting class next month,” Nina said, “then the big one.”
“Skydiving,” Harper said, her nose scrunching upward.
“We don’t need to talk about the skydiving yet,” Claire said.
“Oh, we absolutely have to talk about skydiving. We need to talk about it extensively because we have to prepare.”
“Harper, we rode horses today. We’re still standing in the stable. Can we just have five minutes before we start planning to jump to our deaths out of an airplane?”
“Five minutes,” Harper agreed. “Then we plan.”
Nina smiled. She looked at her friends. She had been a woman who almost hadn’t even come to Claire’s birthday party ten months ago.
She had been a woman who sat in parking lots.
She had been a woman who couldn’t feel anything.
That woman would never have ridden a horse through a forest or had a date planned for Saturday.
She wouldn’t have a letter to David folded in her nightstand or a jar of Senora Morales’ salsa in her fridge.
She wouldn’t have a wave with initials on her wrist.
She was still that woman, but she was also someone new. She could be both things at once, it seemed.
“Let’s go get lunch,” Nina said. “I’m starving.”
They walked to Claire’s car, three women in riding boots, smelling like horses, squinting in the sun.
This road they came in on would also lead them to their next adventure and the one after that, and whatever came after the pact, which they were all beginning to understand was just more life, more living, more of the things they had almost forgotten how to do simply because their ages had changed.