Chapter 16 #2
“He let me go,” Caroline said, and it all came out, in a rush, the way it had come out on Santa’s stage.
“He didn’t argue. He didn’t fight. He didn’t send a single flower.
He gave back the store, and he got up in front of everyone and said it was never his, and he carried my suitcases onto the train and he stood there and let me leave.
He said it’s yours. And he meant it. He’s never meant anything more.
” She pressed her hand against her mouth.
“And I’ve been here twelve days. And I have everything.
Everything I wanted. And the only thing I want is to go home and see his face. ”
Joyce Bannerman was quiet for a long moment.
“I’ve been married for thirty years,” she said at last. “To a man named Lou.” She paused. “Well. His name is Louis. I call him Lou because it annoys his mother.”
Caroline laughed, wetly.
“In our eighth year,” Joyce said, “Lou forgot my birthday. Not just the day. The whole week. He was building his business, and he forgot I existed. And I was so angry I moved into my sister’s house in Newton for two months.
” She smoothed her coat over her knees. “And he didn’t call me either.
For two months. He just started coming home at six.
Every night. To an empty house. And cooking dinner for one. My sister’s neighbor told me.”
“What happened?”
“I went home,” Joyce said simply. “Not because he wore me down. Because I wanted to. There’s a difference. You’ll know the difference for the rest of your life, and so will he.” She looked at Caroline over her small gold glasses. “Go home, Caroline.”
“You hired me.”
“I hired the woman I watched run a floor in Philadelphia,” Joyce said.
“She’s going to be extraordinary somewhere.
I’d like her to be extraordinary and happy.
That’s a much rarer thing, and I’ve got thirty-five years of staff files to prove it.
” She stood up and picked up her handbag.
“My holiday director told me yesterday she’d be glad to stay until October if I asked her nicely.
I suspect I’ll ask her nicely.” She smiled, a little.
“And Everly’s has wanted to do something with the Hadley’s windows for about a hundred years.
Your great-grandfather stood on my sidewalk taking notes in 1921.
I read it in our archives last week. Maybe you and I can talk about that sometime. From Philadelphia.”
Caroline stared at her.
“Take the weekend,” Joyce said. “Go down there. See his face. If you come back on Monday, your office will be here. If you don’t, I’ll send your carousel sketches by mail.” She stopped at the door. “But I don’t think I’ll need a stamp.”
* * *
Caroline took the seven-fifteen train on Saturday morning.
Nobody asked her to. Nobody knew she was on it. She did not call Stephanie, or her father, or Luz. She sat by the window with her old wool coat in her lap and watched Connecticut go by, gray and white and silent, and she did not text him.
She wanted to walk in. She wanted to see his face without warning either of them.
She got to 30th Street at twelve-fifty. It was sunny and very cold. She took a cab straight to the river.
The Bradshaw Freight building was nearly empty on a Saturday. The guard at the desk in the lobby was an older man named Luther who had been there since the building opened. He saw her come through the revolving door and stood straight up out of his chair.
“Mrs. Bradshaw,” he said.
“Is he here, Luther?”
Luther looked at her for a long moment. Then he looked at the elevators.
“He’s been here every Saturday since New Year’s,” he said quietly. “Top floor. I’ll let you up.” He paused with his hand on the button. “He doesn’t know you’re coming?”
“No,” Caroline said.
Luther smiled, for the first time, and pressed the button.
* * *
The top floor was quiet. The office doors were closed. The receptionist’s desk was empty. Caroline walked down the long hallway to the corner office at the end, and the door was half open, and she stopped in it.
Connor was standing at the window with his back to her.
He was in his shirtsleeves. His jacket was over the back of the chair. The desk behind him was covered in papers. He had a cup of coffee in his hand, and he was looking out at the river, and the bridge, and the city in the hard winter sun.
He looked thinner. His hair needed cutting.
She knocked on the open door.
He turned around, and saw her, and dropped the coffee.
The cup hit the carpet and didn’t break. Coffee went everywhere. Neither of them looked at it. Connor stood by the window with his empty hand still half-raised, and his face did something that Caroline would remember when she was ninety years old.
“Caroline,” he said. It came out of him like all the air in his body.
“Hi,” she said.
“You’re—” He stopped. He didn’t move toward her. He just stood there by the window, holding still, with the coffee soaking into the carpet at his feet. “Is everything all right? Is your father—”
“Everybody’s fine.”
“The job—”
“The job is wonderful,” she said. “I’m very good at it.”
“I know you are.” His voice cracked. “I read about the loading dock at Everly’s. In a trade newsletter. Some manager named Maureen gave an interview.”
Caroline laughed. It came out shaky. She came into the office and shut the door behind her and stood with her back against it, the way she had stood against the stockroom door on the night of the Carols.
“I’m not here because I couldn’t do it,” she said.
He waited.
“I need you to understand that first. I’m not here because Boston was too hard, or I was lonely, or I failed.
I didn’t fail. I could stay there. I could build a whole life there, Connor.
I could be happy. I know exactly how happy I could be, because I sat in a bay window on Tuesday night and looked at it. ”
“I know,” he said. “I believe you.”
“You gave me that.” Her eyes were burning. “You gave me the chance to find that out. You didn’t argue. You didn’t make one phone call. You carried my bags onto the train and you let me go.” She swallowed. “You finally let me have something without it being yours.”
He didn’t say anything. His jaw was tight. His eyes were wet.
“So I’m not coming back because I have to,” Caroline said. “I’m coming back because I want to. I’m choosing you. From Boston. With my name on a door. With everything I wanted in my hands.” She took a breath that shook all the way down. “I’m choosing you.”
Connor put his hand over his eyes.
He stood like that by the window for a long moment, and she let him. When he took his hand away, his face was wet, and he did not try to hide it.
“Say it again,” he said roughly.
“I’m choosing you.”
“Okay,” he said, and laughed, a broken sound. “Okay.”
He still didn’t come toward her. He was still waiting.
“But I want to tell you what it is,” Caroline said. “What we are. From now on. I’m not going to leave it to guess.”
“Tell me.”
“We’re honest,” she said. “Both of us. All the time. Even when it’s small and ugly. Especially then. When you want to shut the study door, you tell me why. When I’m tired, I tell you I’m tired. I don’t carry it all and call it strength.”
“Yes.”
“We both show up. Both of us. Dinners. Christmas Eve. The windows. My father. Your mother. You come home. I come home. Neither one of us gets to be too busy to be married.”
“Yes.”
“And the store is mine,” she said. “Hadley’s. My family’s. And your company is yours. Nobody owns anybody’s building. Nobody pays for anybody’s roof and calls it love.”
“Yes,” Connor said. “Yes. All of it.”
“That’s not a probation,” Caroline said. “I’m not going to be watching you. That’s just what it is. That’s what we’re building.”
He nodded. He couldn’t seem to speak.
Then he said, “Can I tell you what I want?”
She blinked. “Yes.”
“I want to be at the lighting,” he said. “Every year. Up on the mezzanine, next to you. Not down on the floor. I don’t ever want to be on that floor again.”
Caroline’s throat closed. She nodded.
“And I want to sell the townhouse,” Connor said.
She stared at him. “What?”
“I bought it by myself,” he said. “Twelve years ago. Before I knew you. I picked it out alone. Everything in it is mine except the clock.” He shook his head.
“I want us to find a house. Together. One we both pick. I want to walk around a hundred terrible open houses with you and argue about kitchens.”
“Connor, I love that house.”
“I know you do.”
“The garland on the banister. The clock. I’ve lived there for nine years.”
“I know. And every night for the last year, you ate dinner standing up at the counter in it, alone.” He held her eyes. “I don’t want to start over in that kitchen, Caroline. I want a new one. That’s what I want. I’m allowed to want something.”
“We’re not selling the house.”
“We’re selling the house,” Connor said, very calmly.
And Caroline, standing against the door of his office with her heart slamming, felt something rise up through her chest that she had not felt in a very long time.
He was disagreeing with her.
He was standing there, three weeks after giving away a store, a man who had spent a month asking her for nothing, and he was telling her flatly that she was wrong about a house.
He wanted something. He said so. He wasn’t going to be her apology for the rest of their lives.
He wasn’t going to stand behind her and nod.
He was her husband. And he wanted a new kitchen.
She laughed.
She couldn’t stop. She put her hands over her face and laughed against the door until tears ran down her cheeks. And Connor, by the window, stared at her, bewildered, and then his mouth twitched, and then he was laughing too, helplessly, with coffee all over his shoes.
“We’ll talk about the house,” she managed.
“We’ll talk about the house,” he agreed.
Caroline pushed herself off the door.