Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
HATTIE
Morning light through unfamiliar curtains. The smell of coffee from somewhere down the hall. A warm weight against my back that turns out to be Maple, who has apparently decided this bed is hers regardless of who else is in it.
Wal is gone. His side of the bed is cold, the pillow still dented. From down the hallway comes the faint sound of the coffee maker, a cabinet opening and closing. Quiet movements from a man who's used to being the only person awake in this house.
I stretch under the sheets, every muscle sore in the best possible way. My body remembers everything from last night. His hands, his mouth, the rough sound he made when he pushed inside me. The way he held me after, fingers tracing circles on my shoulder blade until I fell asleep.
Sitting up, I reach for my sundress on the floor. My phone is dead. My car is dead. My underwear is on the nightstand where Wal put it after pulling it off me with one hand, and I should be mortified but mostly I'm just smiling like an idiot.
The hallway is narrow, hardwood floors, framed photos on the wall. I slow down without meaning to.
Wal and a woman. Dark haired, pretty, laughing at something off camera.
In the next frame, the same woman kneeling in a garden, dirt on her knees, holding up a tomato triumphantly.
Then one of both of them on what looks like a porch, his arm around her, her head tilted onto his shoulder.
She's thin. Beautiful. Wearing a yellow cardigan.
Cora.
More photos down the hall. A younger Wal with less gray, standing in front of the mill sign, Cora beside him with her hand on his chest. A wedding photo in a simple frame. She's in a white dress that looks vintage, wildflowers in her hands.
The hallway is a museum of a life he lived with someone else. Someone he loved, who died, who is still everywhere in this house.
At the end of the hall, past the spare room, a closed door. His bedroom. The one he didn't take me into last night.
The one with the closet full of her clothes he still hasn't moved.
My stomach drops. Not with jealousy. With clarity. Painful, morning light clarity about exactly where I fit in this equation, which is in the spare room. The guest bed. The space reserved for things that don't belong to the permanent collection.
In the kitchen, Wal stands at the counter pouring coffee into two mugs. He's already dressed. Jeans, boots, a gray henley. Sawdust in his hair from a morning I slept through.
"You've been at the mill already?"
He nods. Slides a mug toward me. "Parker's Auto opens at eight. I called. They'll tow your car in, have a look."
Business. Logistics. Morning after conversations that sound like checkout procedures at the B&B down the road.
"Thank you." The coffee is black. Strong enough to strip paint. "Got any cream?"
He opens the fridge. Pulls out a carton of half and half that looks brand new. My throat tightens because he doesn't use cream. He bought this. For me? Or was it already here?
Stop it, Hattie. Stop reading into dairy products.
Maple trots in, nails clicking on the hardwood. She goes to Wal first, presses her head against his thigh. He drops a hand to her ears automatically. Then she comes to me, sits at my feet, looks up.
"She likes you," he says.
"She's Cora's dog."
Something shifts behind his eyes. A door closing. I can see it happen in real time, his face going from open to measured to careful.
"She was."
"Wal." Setting down the mug takes everything I have because my hands want to shake. "Last night was. I don't even have words for last night."
"Me neither."
"But I need to ask you something. And I need you to be honest."
His jaw tightens. He turns from the counter to face me, arms folded across his chest. Guarded. Ready. A man who's been expecting the blow since before I woke up.
"Ask."
"Was last night about me? Or about not being alone?"
The silence is brutal. He stares at me. Those dark eyes working through something I can't read.
"Because I walked past your hallway this morning," I continue, "and Cora is everywhere. Which she should be. She was your wife. But the bedroom door was closed and you brought me to the spare room, and I'm trying not to make that into something but my brain won't stop."
"Hattie."
"And the texts, Wal. The texts were safe because they were anonymous. You could talk to me because I wasn't real. But I'm standing in your kitchen right now being very, very real, and you've been at the mill since before dawn like you needed to put distance between us before I even opened my eyes."
"That's not."
"I'm not done." My voice cracks and I hate it. "I spent two years with a man who kept me in a compartment. I was the girlfriend for Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings. I was never the whole life. And I can't. I cannot do that again. Even for you."
He unfolds his arms. Takes a step toward me. Stops.
"You weren't a compartment last night."
"Then why the spare room?"
The question sits between us. His jaw works. Both hands grip the edge of the counter behind him, knuckles white.
"Because my bedroom still has her books on the nightstand." His voice is low, strained. "Her reading glasses in the drawer. Her robe on the hook behind the door. And you deserved better than being laid down next to another woman's things."
Oh.
"But you haven't moved them," I say quietly. "In two years."
"No."
"Why?"
"Because moving them means she's really gone." He swallows hard. The muscle in his jaw jumps twice. "And if she's really gone, then the last two years were just me sitting in an empty house talking to a stranger on my phone because I couldn't figure out how to be alive without her."
The honesty guts me. Absolutely guts me.
Because he's not being cruel. He's being the most honest person I've ever met, and the truth is that he's not ready.
He might never be ready. And I fell for him anyway, fell before I even knew his face, and now I'm standing in his kitchen with bare feet and blisters and a heart that's doing something catastrophically stupid.
"Wal." My eyes burn. "I can't be the reason you deal with your grief. And I can't be the woman who waits in the spare room while you figure out if you're allowed to love her."
"That's not what I'm asking."
"What are you asking?"
He doesn't answer. Because he doesn't know. His face makes that clear. He's a man caught between the woman on the wall and the woman in his kitchen, and he can't figure out how to hold both, and I cannot be the one to wait while he does the math.
"The car should be fixed by this afternoon," I say. My voice sounds wrong. Too bright, too controlled. Teacher voice. The one I use when Marcus asks where dead goldfish go. "I'll call Tessa from the auto shop."
"Hattie."
"Thank you for the coffee. And for the spare room." Moving toward the door takes every ounce of teacher calm I've got. "And for three months of texts that made me believe someone could want me for more than just Tuesdays."
"Hattie, wait."
I grab my bag from the spare room. Shove my feet into the ruined ballet flats. Maple follows me to the front door, tail low.
On the porch, the mountain air is cold for August. Or maybe that's just me.
My phone is dead, my car is dead, and the man I've been falling for through a phone screen just told me his dead wife's reading glasses are still in his nightstand drawer, which is the most Walden Kirby thing I've ever heard.
I walk toward town. Three miles. Didn't kill me last time.
Behind me, I hear the screen door, but no footsteps follow. He's standing on the porch, watching me go. I know this because I know him. Three months of texts taught me the shape of his silences, and this one is the worst he's ever given me.
Halfway down the gravel drive, tears spill over.
Hot, furious, stupid tears that I wipe away with the back of my hand.
A kindergarten teacher from Reno who fell in love with a wrong number and then fell harder in person, and now she's walking downhill in ruined shoes because the man she wants is still married to a ghost.
My phone is dead. Can't even text him.
Which is probably for the best, because the last text I'd send would be something like: I love you, you impossible, grief stricken, wonderful man. But I'm not going to fight a memory for a place in your life. You have to choose to make room.
Whisper Vale appears around the curve. The bakery. The general store. A small auto shop at the edge of town where a sign says OPEN.
The walk takes twenty minutes. Every step hurts.