Epilogue
The napkin now lived on Claire’s wall, not the kitchen wall or the fridge where it had spent the first year, held up by a magnet, getting splashed by the dishwasher or bumped by grocery bags.
It had graduated.
Claire had taken it to a frame shop on Bay Street to get a proper frame, the same street where Nina’s favorite bakery had reopened. A woman named Diane put it under glass in a simple white frame, handling it with care.
The frame hung in Claire’s studio.
It was still technically the guest room. It still had a bed that was pushed against the wall to make room for her easel and supply table.
There were seven paintings hanging on the wall now.
The abstract from the class with its brave, messy colors; a watercolor of the Beaufort waterfront at sunrise; a small oil painting of their matching tattoos; a sketch of the view from the rock-climbing wall; and a painting of Hank’s that she’d started from the photograph.
Two more were still in progress. One was the marsh at dawn, her version, different from Nina’s. The other she hadn’t named yet. It was just a painting of a porch light at night, three shapes in the chairs. It could have been any porch. It could have been every porch.
The room still smelled like turpentine and linseed oil.
The smell made Claire feel twenty years old and fifty-one at the same time, which was the best way to feel, rooted in who you’ve been, but present in who you are, and curious about who you’d be next.
It was Saturday morning in November, one month after the birthday party, two months after the skydive, and thirteen months since Harper had pulled out a pen and written on a napkin.
Claire stood in her studio, looking at the napkin on the wall.
She could hear Greg in the kitchen. He was making breakfast. He did this on Saturdays now, a routine that had started with the disastrous stir-fry, but had evolved with improvements and one small kitchen fire.
Now it was eggs, toast, and coffee, and the toast was only slightly too dark. The coffee was good, and the eggs were scrambled the way Claire liked them, because she had told Greg how she liked them, and he had remembered.
He remembered.
That was the new thing about Greg. He remembered things.
Not all the time, and not perfectly. Sometimes he still forgot to take out the recycling, or he watched the Braves with more enthusiasm than he watched anything else.
And sometimes he still retreated to the den on the evenings when the world felt like too much.
But he kept asking her questions.
He asked about the paintings, what her friends were up to, and who was coming over for dinner. He asked Claire about her day and actually waited for the answer.
They were not fixed. Claire didn’t believe any marriage was ever fixed. She believed they were construction sites.
That was the metaphor she’d used at Dr. Warren’s office.
Construction sites and marriages were messy, loud, and full of things that might fall on your head, but they had a blueprint now, and they were both reading it.
Some days were good, and some days were hard.
Sometimes Greg said exactly the right thing, and sometimes he said exactly the wrong thing.
Sometimes they sat on the porch together and didn’t say a word at all, but the silence was different than before.
It had space in it, room for two.
Claire turned from the napkin and looked around her studio.
The word still felt new in her mouth. A studio.
She’d spent twenty-seven years not painting. She’d spent twenty-six years making everything beautiful for everyone but herself.
And now she had this place that was just for her.
At 10 a.m., the doorbell rang.
Claire wasn’t expecting anyone. Harper and Jordan were in Mount Pleasant for the weekend. Nina and Sam were on Edisto. Elena was at church, where she went every Saturday morning to light a candle for David and also argue with the priest about the temperature of the sanctuary.
Claire wiped her hands on her jeans, which were covered in paint.
A woman stood on the porch. She was young, maybe early 30s, with her dark hair pulled back. Her face looked like it had been crying a lot. She wore a cardigan even though it was warm this morning and wrapped it around herself like a shield. She held a casserole dish.
“Hi,” the woman said. “I’m so sorry to bother you. My name is Jenna. I just moved in three houses down. I’m the, um…” She paused and took a breath. “I’m the one going through a divorce. I’m sure the neighbors have mentioned it. I know it’s a small community.”
“They haven’t mentioned anything,” Claire said, which was a lie because the women in her neighborhood had mentioned it to her at the grocery store, the post office, and the school parking lot. But Claire had decided years ago that other people’s pain was not her gossip.
“I brought this,” Jenna said, holding up the casserole.
“I, I don’t know, I guess to say hello. My mother always said to bring food when you move somewhere new.
I think the tradition is actually supposed to go the other way, where the neighbors bring you food.
But I just needed something to do with my hands. ”
Claire looked at the casserole dish and at Jenna, with her cardigan wrapped tight. She could tell she’d been crying. And she certainly understood hands that needed something to do.
She thought about how she was thirteen months ago, standing in this kitchen with flour under her fingernails and a gold wedding band and wondering, Who am I?
She thought about all of the adventures and all of the changes that she’d made.
It meant that someone had to go first at some point. Somebody had to say the honest thing.
“Come on in,” Claire said. “My husband just made coffee. It’s decent. He’s getting better at it.”
Jenna stepped inside. She set the casserole on the counter and looked around the kitchen. She could see the open door of the studio.
“What’s that?” she asked, nodding.
“Which part?”
“There’s something in a frame on the wall. Is that a napkin?”
“Oh.” Claire smiled. She poured two cups of coffee. She handed one to Jenna and held the other, leaning against the kitchen counter. “It’s a long story,” Claire said. “Do you have time?”
Jenna wrapped her hands around the coffee mug and looked at Claire. “I’ve got nothing but time.”
Claire took a sip of her coffee.
“Well, it all started with a birthday party,” Claire said, “and a napkin color I just couldn’t get right.”
Jenna’s head tilted to the side. “A napkin?”
“Yep. A napkin started it all.”
The coffee cooled, and Claire told the story from the beginning to a woman who might have just needed it as much as she once did.