The next morning, Luca wakes her by shaking her shoulder.
“Mom, get up. Mason’s door is locked, and he won’t open it.”
“What?” She was in a deep, dreamless sleep. She fumbles for her phone on the nightstand, but her fingers swat air. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know, but Mason won’t come out of his room. I’m hungry.” He runs down the hall. She hears the sharp scrape of a stool toward the kitchen cabinets. The bang of a plastic bowl as it slips from his fingers. The clumsy way he opens and shuts the fridge and ransacks the silverware. She really needs to start keeping his bowls and cups in a lower cabinet. Grace’s joints stiffen as she heaves herself out of bed, a dull ache nipping the base of her spine. She plucks her sweater from the dresser, walks to Mason’s room, and jiggles the knob.
“Mase?”
She presses her ear to the door. Images flash through her mom brain: he’s hurt himself. He’s stopped breathing. He’s climbed out the window and been missing since last night. “Mason?” She attempts to keep the fear out of her voice as she knocks harder against the wood. “Open the door, please.” Noah says if she is firm and uses action words, he’ll be more likely to do what she says. She peers down the hall. Where is Noah?
After a few minutes, he unlocks the door. “You know what a locked door means, right?”
She doesn’t warn him about his tone. Unlike Luca, Mason speaks factually, not always emotionally. “Luca and I were worried about you. We don’t lock doors in this house.”
“Fine. Can I go back to reading?”
“What are you reading?”
“My mom’s journal.”
“What?” She pushes into his room, pauses, and waits for permission. “May I see?”
He points to a gray journal on the bed, its pages fluttering under the high whine of the ceiling fan. She flips off the fan and runs her fingers over the cover. It’s the same journal she saw in Lee’s studio. The one she brought to Black Mountain. “Hey, bud. You know that journals are for private thoughts, right?”
Mason hovers by the door. “Yes, I am quite aware of that fact.”
“And those thoughts are for grown-ups, not kids.”
“I have an IQ of one-fifty-six. That’s a landslide compared to most grown-ups.”
Grace laughs. “That’s true, but this is still meant to be private.”
He sits beside her and points to a random page. “Have you read this? My mom had a lot of secrets.”
She refrains from just taking the journal. She would never dream of doing something so sudden with Mason, something she wouldn’t even think twice about if it were Luca. She is growing accustomed to the two sets of rules, but sometimes it’s hard not to fall back on her parenting impulses. “Is this why you were upset last night? Were you looking for this?”
He shrugs. “I found it, didn’t I?” He plucks the wooden airplane from his nightstand and holds it. “I just miss her.”
“Of course you do,” Grace says. She eyes the journal again. “Sorry for coming into your room unannounced. Would you like some breakfast?”
“Yes, please.”
“May I have the journal?”
He rolls his eyes. “Grown-ups really are no fun.”
“Thank you.” She tucks it under her arm and then places it on her desk. She heads into the kitchen and sees Noah bent over her coffeemaker. “That’s a lovely sight.” Grace smiles and kisses him on the lips.
“Well, good morning to you too. Didn’t want to wake you.” Circles deepen the hollows beneath his eyes.
“No sleep?”
“Couldn’t for some reason.”
“Coffee should help.” She slips on her sweater, washes her hands, and pulls down two mugs.
“I can’t find the decaf though. Where do you keep it?”
“Oh, you know what? I’m out. But the doctor said I could still have one cup of regular coffee a day.”
“Even with your age and everything?” Noah raises his eyebrows. “She said that’s okay?”
She doesn’t take offense at his question and instead laughs. “Yes, even in my old age. One cup of coffee is fine.”
His face relaxes. “Thank God. Because I need it today. One strong cup coming up.”
Once breakfast is ready, Luca plays with two Transformers on the table, mouthing silent explosions as the plastic toys butt into each other, while Mason reads a science book.
Grace sips her coffee, not yet ready to eat. Noah wolfs his eggs. “Everything okay? You seem nervous or something.”
“No.” He wipes away egg with his napkin. “Just anxious to get everything wrapped up today.”
“We’ll get it done. Carol offered to watch the boys while we work, since she’s right down the street. They can play outside.”
Mason’s head pops up. “Can I come with you? I don’t want to go to Carol’s.”
“I thought you liked Carol’s,” Grace says.
“Zoe is too messy. Can we just stay while you work? We won’t get in the way, right, Luca?”
Luca nods. “Right.”
Grace thinks of Mason’s room, robbed of all personal items. “You know your room is empty.”
“I just want to say good-bye.”
“Fair enough.”
Mason nods and returns to reading. She waits for the caffeine to assuage her pounding head. After breakfast, they pile into Noah’s car. She makes sure the boys fasten their seat belts. Her mind drifts as Noah engages Mason and Luca in a game of trivia.
Mason is the first to bolt inside after pulling into the gravel drive. His arms slice in straight, stiff lines by his hips. He dashes into his old room, shuts the door, and twists the lock. Luca charges into the backyard and climbs onto the fraying—but recently reinforced—tire swing. She watches her unruly boy thrust his middle through the rubber and gain higher and higher momentum.
Grace hesitates outside Mason’s bedroom door and then finds Noah in the kitchen, rummaging through cabinets. She leans against the counter and crosses her arms. “Hey, can we get on the same page about something?”
“That we should come up with a way to inject caffeine into our veins to get anything done?” He spins in the room. “Have you seen Lee’s coffeemaker? I made sure not to pack it yet.”
Grace retrieves it from the upper cabinet by the refrigerator and plugs it in. “Problem solved.”
“My hero.” Noah kisses her, and for a moment, she gets lost in the feel of his tongue in her mouth and his strong hand gripping the back of her neck. He pulls away first. “What do you want to get on the same page about?”
“So this morning, I asked Mason not to lock his bedroom door. He likes to lock it, which I get, but we have a no-locked-doors policy in our house.”
Noah nods and fills the carafe from the tap. “Sure, I get it. I’ll talk to him.”
“Thank you.” Grace has a thing about locked doors. Her sister used to lock herself in her room. Bad things happened behind locked doors. They made her paranoid.
“Now for the important question.” Noah reaches across the counter and palms a bag of Vienna roast. “Are you allowed to have another cup?”
“I won’t tell if you won’t.” Did Grace turn off her own coffeepot? Noah shakes the grounds into the filter and presses start. The kitchen fills with the scent of roasted beans. She’s so forgetful lately: misplacing socks in the linen closet, toothpaste in the freezer, mail dropped and forgotten under the driver’s seat of her car. He hands her Lee’s hair school mug.
She traces her fingers over the porcelain of Lee’s favorite mug. How many times has she stood in this very spot, exhausted from a bad parenting night while drowning her sorrows in countless cups of coffee? Grace suppresses the memory as she pours herself a cup, clears her throat, and turns toward the studio. “Would you mind keeping an eye on Luca? I’m going to pick up where we left off.”
“Sure. I’ve just got a few more things in here and then I’ll join you.”
She steps into the garage, eyeing the rug they sat on last night. She moves to it first, deposits her coffee on the edge of Lee’s desk, and winds the shaggy white rug into a tight coil. She drags it to the corner of the garage, hoists it up with some effort, and smacks away the dirt, hair, and lint that blow back onto her shoulders. Maybe the rug had been a terrible idea.
She sweeps up the debris from the cement, pulling the clogged bristles of the broom across split ends, pennies, rocks, and dead ladybugs, and then tugs the neck of her shirt over her nose as her eyes burn from the stench of lingering chemicals—bleach, ammonia, glosses, hair spray. She dumps the sagging dustpan into the open trash bag and looks around again. So much has been packed, moved, and taken apart. Perhaps she is prolonging all of this because she really isn’t ready to move on. Despite going back to Black Mountain. Despite the quick ceremony in the park. Despite watching Lee’s pebbled ashes drift away, carried high by the wind.
A cluster of products tumbles from Lee’s desk, and she stoops to throw them into a half-filled box. She’ll donate them to a local salon so they won’t go to waste. She takes another sip of her coffee, still scalding. That’s why Lee loved this mug. Her coffee, no matter long how long it sat, stayed hot.
The pocket door rolls open. “Refill?” he offers.
“Now we’re going from one cup to three?”
“Hey, it won’t kill you, right? You said so yourself.”
She nods and he crosses the bare cement to top her off, looks into her eyes, and kisses her. “I want to talk to you about something tonight, okay?”
Her skin barbs. “Okay.”
“Nothing bad, I promise.”
Grace immediately begins to decipher their recent conversations and tries to pinpoint what he could possibly have to say.
He smooths the wrinkle from between her brows. “That’s your worry crease, you know. It’s your tell.”
She fingers it self-consciously. I have a tell?
“Don’t worry. It’s adorable.” He flips the coffeepot lid and retreats back to the kitchen. “Open or closed?”
“Open, please.”
She shuffles through all of the things Noah could have to tell her. She knows everything about him … doesn’t she? What could he possibly want to discuss?
She takes another sip of coffee and wonders if it has anything to do with the baby. They haven’t talked about living arrangements yet, but of course the natural progression will be to move in together. Maybe even get married.
There’s a small part of her that would take satisfaction in rubbing her newfound happiness in Chad’s face, after everything he’s put her through.
But is she ready for all of that?
She continues packing and cleaning and stops every few minutes to sneak a peek at Luca and make sure Mason is fine. Noah works diligently in the other room, and she admires his movements, the width of his back, the muscles flexing beneath his T-shirt.
Desire hums through her body but she wills it away. She focuses on the task at hand and waits for what he will inevitably reveal tonight.