Chapter 10
Chapter Ten
Annie
Ichoose the kitchen because it has always been the least impressive room in Lanie's house.
The table is old pine, scarred by knives and coffee rings.
One chair wobbles despite the numerous attempts to right it.
The curtains over the sink are faded yellow, and the refrigerator hums with a steady, mechanical rattle.
It feels safer than the porch. Safer than standing in the yard with Reed looking at me like he can fix me if he only finds the right tool.
Lanie puts coffee on the table, along with a plate of biscuits and a jar of apple butter. She doesn't ask if we want it. She just sets it down, looks at me once, then at Reed.
"I'll be out back," she says. “Not far."
Reed nods. "Thank you."
Lanie's eyes narrow a fraction, but she leaves without comment, letting the screen door slap softly behind her.
Reed sits across from me. He’s taken off the expensive coat, but it's still draped over the back of his chair, dark wool too fine for this kitchen. His hands rest around the coffee cup like he needs something to hold. He doesn't speak.
"You promised," I say.
“No interrupting,” he agrees.
I look down at the table. There's flour caught in one of the old knife grooves near my thumb. I scratch at it with my nail because if I look at him too long, I might start with the wrong thing. So I start with Catherine.
"Your mother used to talk about grandchildren when you weren't close enough to hear her."
Reed goes still.
"Not in a way anybody else would call cruel," I say.
“She’s good at that. She'd say she'd been waiting so long.
She'd mention the Stanhope line needing to continue.
She'd ask if we were still trying in that way that told me she already knew the answer and that the question would sting.
" His fingers flex around the mug, but he says nothing.
"Sometimes she'd say Christmas wasn't the same without children. Or that you’d always imagined a house full of them.
" My throat tightens, but I keep going. "Then there were the worse ones. "
The kitchen clock ticks above the back door.
"She said some women simply weren't suited to motherhood." Reed's face changes. "She wondered if my body was trying to tell me something. She said it would be heartbreaking if you lost the family you'd always wanted because my body simply wasn’t up to the task of carrying your baby."
His eyes close for half a second.
I give him a minute before I continue, then he opens them.
"She said every bit of it like concern. That was the point. If I repeated it, I'd sound hysterical. Oversensitive. Like I was putting poison in the mouth of a woman who only wanted to help."
"Annie," he says, then stops himself. He’s not saying it to stop me. He’s flinging it out like a life preserver. For himself or me, I’m not sure.
He swallows. "Sorry."
"She knew when to do it. You'd take a call. Glen would pull you aside. Someone would need you in another room. The second you were gone, there it was." I reach for my coffee, but I don’t bother sipping it. "Lexi was different. Lexi was never one dramatic problem. She was hundreds of little ones."
I watch his fingers tighten around the mug.
"The calls. The emergencies. The favors.
The things she couldn't possibly ask anyone else to handle because your families had been close forever and she'd always been part of your life.
" I watch the steam fade from my cup. "After her father's funeral, I understood why you went to check on her. I did. I told myself that was decent. That she was grieving. I’ve lost a parent.
I know how it hurts. I told myself that only a selfish wife would make another woman's father's funeral about herself. "
Reed's eyes drop.
"But then it got late. Then later. Someone needed help with something.
People left. Lexi was upset. You stayed.
" The memory comes back in pieces. The cold sheets.
The lamp burning on my side of the bed. My phone face-up on the nightstand, no new messages.
"I lay there waiting for my husband to come home from comforting the woman everyone once expected him to marry. "
His face drains.
"And I felt guilty for minding. Because Lexi was grieving.
Because you were good. Because what kind of woman sits in bed jealous after a funeral?
" I breathe in slowly. "But that didn't stop it hurting.
It didn't stop me remembering all the times somebody said she was who you were supposed to choose.
It didn't stop me wondering if she could have given you what I couldn't."
Reed looks gutted, stunned into silence.
"You came home thinking you'd done a good thing," I say.
"Maybe you had. But I stayed awake beside you, wondering how long a wife is supposed to wait patiently while her husband gives another woman the tenderness that’s usually only reserved for a wife.
" He doesn't defend himself. That nearly undoes me, so I keep moving.
"The stories were constant. Remember when Reed did this.
Remember that summer at the lake. Remember that party, that trip, that disaster at so-and-so's house.
Reed at fifteen. Reed at seventeen. Reed before I existed.
" I press my palm flat to the table. "They weren't lies.
Your history is real. Lexi's history with your family is real.”
He watches me, and I can see it all finally hitting. But I don’t stop.
"The problem was sitting through years of conversations where I had no place, then smiling when someone remembered to explain the joke." Reed flinches. "You didn't like Jackson bringing papers to me today."
His shoulders stiffen.
"You'd known about him for less than an hour, and it bothered you.
So imagine I spent the night soothing him through grief.
Imagine everyone around me told you he was the man I should have married.
Imagine every time he called, I left the room to help him because he'd always been around and you were expected to understand. " My voice cracks on the last word.
Reed's hand moves across the table before he catches himself, stopping with his fingers inches from mine. I look at his hand until he draws it back.
"Every time Lexi bothered me, I heard some version of the same thing. From you, sometimes. From Catherine. From people at dinners and parties. Lexi has always been around. You and Lexi had history. The families were practically one family. I shouldn't read anything into it."
His fingers strain around the sides of his mug. He’s doing everything he can to keep from saying something. I can see the restraint. I can see what it’s costing him.
"The message was clear whether anybody meant it or not. Lexi's place was permanent. My discomfort with that place was mine to deal with." Outside, a branch scrapes against the siding. Reed stares at the table, his face wrecked. "Then there was my voice."
His eyes come back to mine, startled.
"When I first came into your world, people asked where I was from after hearing me talk for thirty seconds.
Sometimes friendly. Sometimes not. Your mother corrected my pronunciation in front of guests.
" His throat works. "Somebody once repeated one of my phrases back to me because they thought it was charming.
It sounded like bad dinner theater." The memory sits bitter in my mouth.
"Another woman asked you if my accent had been stronger when we first met. "
"I remember that," he says softly, then presses his mouth shut.
"I started listening to myself. Flattening vowels.
Dropping words. Cutting out anything that sounded too much like home.
" I look toward the window over the sink, where Lanie's yard blurs green and brown beyond the glass.
"I watched newscasters. Sitcoms. Soap operas.
Anything with women who sounded like they belonged in rooms where nobody asked who raised them.
" Reed's eyes are wet now. "I didn't wake up one morning and decide to erase myself. I did it one correction at a time."
The refrigerator clicks on, its motor shuddering in the quiet room.
"They asked about foster care like it was fodder for brunch discussions and not the worst time of my life.
They asked about my father like they were entitled to the answer because I'd married into a family with framed portraits going back generations.
They treated the worst parts of my childhood like unusual dinner details.
" I grip the edge of the table. "Your mother could make my history sound like a social deficiency instead of something I survived. "
His face is white.
"She called me Little Orphan Annie." The words sit there, ugly and childish and sharp.
"More than once," I add. "Sometimes joking.
Sometimes when I didn't know something everybody else knew.
Sometimes with that indulgent little tone, like she was reminding the room I had come from somewhere fundamentally different. "
Reed shuts his eyes again. When he opens them, I'm still looking at him.
"Do you know how exhausting it got?" I ask.
"Sorting every incident. Was this one bad enough to tell you?
Was that joke worth starting a fight over?
Was Lexi calling again actually inappropriate, or was I jealous?
Was Catherine being cruel, or was she just Catherine?
Was I failing to understand people who'd known each other for decades?
" My nails bite into the old wood. "Was I only upset because I knew I had married three flights above myself and everyone else knew it too? "
"Don't," he whispers.
"No. You asked." He bows his head. "Every time I thought about telling you, I imagined having to prove it counted.
I imagined you confused and hurt and wanting examples, dates, exact words.
I imagined explaining why a smile wasn't kind and a question wasn't innocent.
" I let go of the table before I splinter myself on it. "Most of the time I swallowed it."
Reed breathes like it hurts.
"There were nights I stayed in my workroom because it was the only place at Stanhope where nobody wanted me to become smaller.
Then I started waiting until bedtime to tell you anything real, because that was when we were alone.
No family. No staff. No phones. No obligations.
" The ache in my chest spreads. "Somewhere along the way, even that stopped feeling easy. "
Reed sits with it. For once, he doesn't rush to fill the silence. Then, very quietly, he asks, "How did I not know?"
I look at him. "You never looked.”
The words don't come out loud. They don't need to. His face falls even more.
"It was more convenient for you not to know," I say.
"And part of that's on me, I suppose. I was scared if you saw all of it clearly, you'd realize how far below you I really was.
" His hand curls into a fist on the table.
"But more than anything, I wanted you to know.
I wanted you to wake up one morning and see it without me having to lay out evidence like a case. I wanted you to make it stop."
Reed's eyes lift to mine.
"You loved me," I say. "I never doubted that.
That was part of the problem. You loved me, so you thought the rest would work itself out.
If I smiled through dinner, dinner went fine.
If I came to the event, I must have wanted to be there.
If I didn't complain about Lexi, Lexi wasn't a problem.
If I learned how to stand in your world without embarrassing anybody, then your world must have accepted me.
" I push the coffee cup away. "You never asked what it cost."
He doesn't speak.
For a few minutes, the kitchen is only the clock, the refrigerator, and the wind moving around the corners of the house. Reed sits across from me at Lanie's scratched table, and the strangest part is how familiar it feels.
It feels like us.
Late nights with cheap takeout spread over a coffee table.
Reed listening while I talked about photographs and ghost stories until I ran out of breath.
Me listening while he complained about obligations he hated but never seemed able to refuse.
Watching movies late into the night, keeping the volume low while we talked through half the scenes.
I miss those moments so much it aches. Reed feels it too.
I can see it in the way his face changes, the way the hard lines around his mouth loosen, the way his attention settles on me without pushing.
I notice his hands around the cup, the tired shadow under his eyes, the absence of any argument in his body.
Once, being watched by him was enough to make me feel like the world had shrunk around us.
For one dangerous second, I want to reach across the table. My fingers twitch.
Then another part of me answers back, colder and clearer.
Knowing what family he came from didn't mean agreeing to be diminished by them.
Marrying money didn't require surrendering my voice.
Understanding Lexi had history didn't mean pretending every boundary she crossed was harmless.
Being loved by Reed should never have meant accepting contempt as the price of admission.
I stand. The chair legs scrape the floor, too loud in the quiet kitchen. Reed stands too, but he doesn't move toward me.
"You need to go back to your hotel," I say. I almost feel guilty for saying it, and then I remember that I’ve spent years worrying about everyone else’s feelings and mine last.
His face folds around the disappointment before he smooths it out. "Okay."
No argument. No plea. He gathers his coat from the back of the chair and puts it over one arm. At the door, he pauses with his hand near the knob.
"I know it isn't what you need to hear right now," he says, voice rough. "But I've loved you since the day I met you, Annie. Absolutely nothing will ever change that."
He leaves before I can answer.
Through the window, I watch him cross Lanie's yard. Gravel shifts under his good shoes. He gets into the rental car, sits there a moment, then backs down the drive. The kitchen goes quieter after him.
I sit back down at the table and look at the two abandoned coffee cups.
His is still full. Mine has a faint crescent of lipstick on the rim.
The conversation hasn't repaired anything. It’s made some things worse by putting names to them.
But under all of it, beneath the damage and the years and the ache in my ribs, there is still a version of Reed I know how to talk to.
That's more dangerous than anger.
I wrap both hands around my cold cup and listen to his car fade down the road. Sending him away was necessary because part of me wanted him to stay. If I give in to that part now, I don't know whether the woman I'm finding here in Bear Claw will survive it.