Chapter 8
eight
JAKE
A week after the Fourth of July, Jake sat on the screened porch of the cottage at six in the morning, watched the sun come up over the ocean and thought about his wife's mouth.
He hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. The softness of it. The way she'd kissed him back for those five or ten seconds before pulling away, her whole body leaning into his and then retracting, like a wave that reaches the shore and changes its mind.
He could still recall the exact pressure of her lips, the taste of rosé and salt air, the sound she'd made — a sharp intake of breath, almost a gasp — when his hand found her jaw.
He'd been replaying it on a loop for seven days, and each time the memory cycled through him it left a deeper mark, because it wasn't just a kiss.
It was proof that she still wanted him. And the fact that she'd walked away despite wanting him was worse, somehow, than if she'd never kissed him back at all.
She'd been clear. That can't happen again.
He'd said I know, and he had known. He still knew.
But knowing didn't stop his body from remembering hers against his shoulder, or his mind from circling back to the question that had kept him awake every night since: if she still wanted him, if the desire was still there buried under six years of disappointment, then wasn't there something left to save?
Jake didn't push. He'd learned that much.
The morning after the Fourth, he'd shown up on the porch at eight as usual, she'd come out for their walk, and neither of them had mentioned the kiss.
He'd asked about her writing, and she'd told him she was reworking the ferry story based on Frank's notes.
The conversation had been careful, ordinary…
and charged with everything they weren't saying.
This had continued for a week. Seven mornings of walking beside her and pretending he wasn't aware of every inch of space between them.
Seven mornings of listening to her talk about her stories, Ellen's garden and the new recipe Deborah from the writing group had given her, while his skin hummed with the memory of her mouth.
He wanted her. His desire was nothing like the routine, mechanical intimacy that had characterized the last years of their marriage, when sex had dwindled from infrequent to absent and he'd barely noticed.
He wanted her with an aching, specific hunger having finally looked at the woman beside him and seen her clearly.
Her hands when she talked about her writing, fingers moving in the air as if shaping the sentences.
Her laugh when Murphy did something stupid, unguarded and full, her head tilting back.
The way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was thinking.
The freckles across her shoulders that darkened as summer deepened.
The quiet concentration on her face when she sat in the sunroom with her laptop, visible through the window from his porch if he angled his chair just right, which he had.
He'd spent six years married to this woman and he'd never really looked at her. Now he couldn't look away, and it was too late, and the irony was so precise it could have drawn blood.
Finally, Jake made a decision.
He'd been walking through town for weeks now, on his own, in the long afternoons when Violet was writing and the cottage pressed in on him with its silence.
At first he'd walked without purpose, just killing hours, but gradually the walks had taken on a purpose.
He'd started noticing things. The bookstore on Harbor Street where the owner kept a shelf of local authors and always had a recommendation ready.
The nursery at the edge of town where a woman named Patrice grew herbs in terra-cotta pots and would talk about rosemary for twenty minutes if you let her.
The taqueria on the boardwalk that was cash-only and had a line out the door every evening, where he'd eaten alone at the counter and had the best fish tacos of his life.
The art supply store next to the post office, cluttered and dusty, run by a man named Gil who sold handmade journals with covers pressed from wildflowers.
He'd noticed these places because Violet had mentioned them.
Not to him, necessarily. Some of them he'd overheard in her conversations with Ellen.
Some she'd referenced in passing on their morning walks.
The taqueria had come up when she'd told him about a dinner she'd had with Deborah after writing group.
The bookstore was where she'd picked up a Due?as collection before he'd bought her another copy.
The art supply store: he wasn't sure she'd mentioned it at all, but he'd gone in on instinct, because it was the kind of place she would have loved in New York, back when she still kept a journal, wrote in margins and collected pens the way other people collected jewelry.
Now, standing in the kitchen at seven-thirty, scrambling eggs that were finally, after weeks of practice, consistently edible, he rehearsed the question in his head.
It wasn't a date. He wasn't going to call it a date.
He was going to ask her, casually, with no expectations, whether she'd like to spend the day in town.
Not a yacht or a Michelin restaurant or any of the expensive, frictionless gestures that had always been his reflex and her disappointment.
Just a day. Walking. Browsing. Eating tacos at the counter.
He caught her on the porch at eight.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning." She had her coffee — black, the cup she carried on every walk.
Her hair was in a loose braid over one shoulder and she was wearing a sundress he hadn't seen before, something with thin straps and a print of faded blue flowers.
Desire rippled through him. God, he had been a fool. She looked like a summer goddess.
"I was wondering," he said, clearing his throat. He paused, because the speech he'd rehearsed had evaporated the moment she looked at him.
She waited. One eyebrow slightly raised.
"I was going to walk around town today. See some of the shops. And I wondered if you'd want to come."
"Come where?"
"Just into town. No agenda. I've been exploring on my own and there are some places I think you'd like."
She looked at him warily, searching for the angle, the ulterior motive, the grand gesture hiding behind the casual invitation.
"I have errands," she said.
"So we'll run errands."
"I'm picking up a prescription and returning a library book. It's not exactly riveting."
"I don't need riveting, Vi. I need to get out of that cottage before I start talking to the apples."
She smiled. His gaze lingered on her mouth.
"Fine," she said. "But only because I need to go anyway, and it's easier to drive together than take two cars."
"Absolutely. Purely logistical."
"Don't make it weird."
"I wouldn't dream of it."
They drove into town with the windows down.
Violet navigated from the passenger seat, pointing him past the turnoff he would have taken and down a side street that cut behind the boardwalk to a parking lot she said was always empty.
She was right. It was empty. She knew this town; it came from years of quiet, solitary attention.
As he parked and they stepped into the warm morning, he realized he was about to spend the day in the world she'd built while he wasn't watching.
The library was first. She returned her book — a dog-eared copy of something by Alice Munro — and spent fifteen minutes browsing the fiction section while he stood by the window and watched her move along the shelves, pulling books out, reading first pages, putting them back.
She chose two. He didn't ask what they were, but he could see the covers: one with a cottage, one plain blue.
The pharmacy was next. He waited outside on a bench while she went in, and when she came out she was holding a paper bag and squinting in the sunlight. He had to look away because the urge to stand up and push the hair off her face was so strong it hurt.
"Where to?" she asked.
"You tell me."
"You said you had places."
"I do. But your errands first."
She studied him. "I'm done."
"Then follow me."
He led her to Harbor Street. The bookstore was halfway down the block, wedged between a surf shop and a café with outdoor tables shaded by bougainvillea. The owner, a woman named Sandra with reading glasses on a chain, greeted Violet by name.
"Vi! You finished the Gallant?"
"I'm savoring it."
"Don't savor too long. I've got a Lorrie Moore collection set aside for you." Sandra looked at Jake. “I’ve seen you here before."
“This is my husband," Violet said, and the word surprised both of them. She hadn't called him that since the night he'd arrived at Belmar Cove.
Sandra looked at him over her glasses. "You're the husband."
"I'm the husband."
"Hmm." It carried the same energy as Ellen's mm-hmm on the beach. He was beginning to realize that every woman in this town had been briefed.
He bought the Lorrie Moore collection. Violet protested, "You don't have to buy me books, Jake.”
"I'm buying it for myself.”
Violet gave him a look that said she didn't believe a word of it, but she let him carry the bag.
From the bookstore they walked to the nursery.
Patrice was at the counter, repotting a basil plant, and she launched into an explanation of companion planting that lasted ten minutes and would have bored him rigid a month ago.
He listened and asked questions. Violet watched him with an expression he couldn't read — surprise, or curiosity, or cautious appraisal, as if she was revising a hypothesis she'd held for years.
He bought a pot of rosemary. Violet bought lavender. They carried them down the sidewalk like trophies.
They ate lunch at the taqueria. Cash-only, as promised, and the line was already forming even though it was barely noon.
They sat at the counter on mismatched stools with paper baskets of fish tacos and cups of horchata.
He watched her eat and listened to her talk about the woman who ran the place, how she'd moved here from Ensenada fifteen years ago and started cooking from a cart on the boardwalk before the town council gave her the storefront.
"I've been coming back when I’m here,” she said.
"Every time you were here and I was somewhere else."
She looked at him. A nod she didn't quite give.
"I'm here now," he said.
"You are."
"This is a good taco."
"Best in California."
"That's a big claim."
"It's the truth."
He watched her eat. She had a dab of crema on her lower lip and she wiped it with the back of her hand.
The gesture was so unselfconscious, so far from the careful woman who used to sit across from him at restaurants in LA with her napkin in her lap and her expression arranged, that his heart seized.
This was who she was when she wasn’t… performing for him. Relaxed. Easy. Present. Eating tacos at a counter with crema on her lip, her braid falling apart and her eyes bright with the pleasure of good food, familiar streets and a town that knew her by name.
He'd missed all of it. For years.
They walked back to the car in the late afternoon.
The light had gone golden and the shadows were long on the sidewalk.
Violet was carrying the lavender plant in one arm and the library books in the other, he was carrying the rosemary, the Lorrie Moore and the brown paper bag from the pharmacy she'd forgotten in the car and he'd remembered.
At the passenger door, she stopped.
"You planned this," she said.
"I planned a walk around town."
"You planned this town. Every stop was somewhere I go. The bookstore, the nursery, the taqueria." She looked at him. "How did you know about Patrice?"
"You mentioned her. On a walk with Ellen. You said she'd given you rosemary clippings for the kitchen."
"That was weeks ago."
"I know."
She stared at him. Her hazel eyes, the late sun catching the gold in them.
He watched her process it, the realization that he'd been listening not just during their morning walks, but during every walk, every passing comment, every fragment of her life in this town that she'd let slip without thinking he was paying attention.
He'd been paying attention.
"Jake," she said, and her voice had something in it he hadn't heard in a long time. Something more fragile than warmth, or even forgiveness. Something that sounded like the beginning of believing.
He wanted to kiss her. The desire was so strong he could trace its path through his body — chest, throat, hands.
He wanted to set the rosemary on the hood of the car, take her face in both hands and kiss her the way he'd kissed her on the Fourth, except slower, deeper, with all the things he wanted to say pressed into it.
He didn't.
Instead, he reached for her free hand. She let him take it.
He lifted it, turned it over, and pressed his lips to her knuckles.
Gentle. Unhurried. His mouth against the bones of her hand, the skin warm from the sun.
He held the kiss for two seconds, maybe longer.
Then he set her hand down carefully and stepped back.
Violet looked at him. Her lips were parted. Her breath had caught, he could see it in the stillness of her chest. The lavender in her other arm trembled.
"Thank you for today," he said. "I had a really good time."
She didn't say anything for a moment. Then she opened the car door and got in.
He walked around to the driver's side and started the engine, and they drove back to Belmar Cove in a silence that was different from the ones that had come before.
Charged, like the air before a storm, like something gathering at the edges that neither of them was ready to name.
At the beach house, she got out with her plants and her books; she stood for a moment on the gravel drive.
"Jake."
"Yeah?"
"That was a good day."
He nodded. "It was."
Violet turned and walked toward the porch, lavender in her arms, braid half undone, library books balanced against her hip.
At the door she paused and looked back at him, and there was something in her face that he hadn't seen in months, maybe years.
Something open. Unguarded. A window that had been painted shut for so long neither of them remembered it could open.
Then she went inside.
He sat in the car for a full minute after she'd gone, his forehead against the steering wheel, breathing. Aching.