5
THE DENIAL
“I’m telling you, it didn’t happen.” Ed, not at all hungover, not at all repentant about his behavior last night, walks past in a towel, dripping with shower water and completely oblivious to the terror he inflicted on me. “I stayed later than I thought I would, but I had only one drink. I wasn’t, in any way, drunk.”
“You pushed me.” I turn to once again show him the bruises on my back and shoulder. “You bruised me, and laughed at it all, to boot.”
“Anastasia.” He steps into a pair of boxers and reaches for me.
I pull away. “Don’t touch me!”
“Look, you’re exhausted. How much have you slept the past few days? A few hours, maybe? I shouldn’t have gone out last night. The stress of the move, the house being less than we thought it would be . . . it’s too much for you.”
I hate how he says it: as if anyone else could handle it with one hand tied behind her back, but I’m incapable, too delicate and fragile. “You. Pushed. Me.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know you normally wouldn’t do that, but you weren’t yourself last night.”
He chuckles. “I was fine last night.”
“ Fine? Then how do you explain this?” I indicate the marring on my back.
“I don’t know . . . maybe you were half-asleep and slipped and fell on the hallway floor.”
“Again with the hallway carpeting! It was disgusting! It had to come out!”
“Ana. Relax. I wasn’t talking about the carpeting.”
My shoulders shake with my sobbing. I draw my knees to my chest and bury my head there. “It wasn’t a bad dream, and I didn’t just fall. Did I?”
“I don’t know, but I know I wouldn’t hurt you. I came home around midnight. I looked in on you and the baby. I put a movie on downstairs, had a snack, and fell asleep on the sofa. Around five, I woke up and went upstairs, but the bedroom door was locked.”
“I had to lock the door. You were out of your mind. Sitting there in the hallway, laughing at me, with that damn attic door opening on its own.”
“The door . . .”
“Yes, it opens on its own.”
“It’s an old house. Things like that are going to happen.”
“And if you’re telling me you weren’t drunk, then you don’t even have an excuse for acting that way.”
“I think it’s pretty clear what’s happening. You’re stressed out. You’ve got a lot on your plate, and given the state of this place . . . When you’re used to making places beautiful, and you have to live in this monument to an era lauding bell-bottoms and tab collars, it’s no wonder you can’t relax. You’re working nonstop to make this place decent, aren’t you? For all we know, you’re bruised from bumping into things while hauling all that carpeting outside on your own.”
His hand lands on my back. This time, I allow him to touch me.
“I hate it here, Ed. I hate it. I hate that your parents still don’t like me after all these years, even after I had their first grandchild. I hate this town, I hate this house, and I hate that awful woman at the historical society who treats me like trash because I wasn’t born here!”
“First, my parents will come around. They hardly know you. Second, Sophie Malcolm?” He starts to chuckle but cuts it off the moment I shoot a glare in his direction.
“She won’t tell me anything about this house, and she was annoyed that I’d even walked through the door.”
Edison sighs. “Honey . . . did you offer to buy her book? She wrote a book about this town and its settlers and its first houses and businesses. If you went in there asking for free information . . .” He shrugs. “Maybe that’s why she was frosty.”
“How was I supposed to know she wrote a book? I would’ve bought the damn thing!”
“Tell me more about the door you found.”
I sniffle. “Bill’s crew brought it to the back patio so I could clean and strip it.”
“And you like it? You want to incorporate it into the renovation?”
“I think it belongs at the end of the hallway.” Finally, I look at him. A flash of the evil grin he sported last night revisits me, but only for a split second before it fades back into my memory. “Leading to the attic.”
“Let’s go have a look at it, okay? I’ll call my parents. They’ll come get the baby, and then you and I will spend the day together. Want to clean up that door together? Maybe grab some lunch? A glass of wine in the afternoon?” He drops a kiss on my lips, then another, deeper this time.
His hand is on my hip, so warm, so familiar, and he’s leaning over me, pressing his nearly naked body to mine, lowering me to my back.
This is my husband. I don’t know who I encountered in the hallway last night. I can’t reconcile one man with the other.
Either Edison is succumbing to whatever resides beyond that door at the end of the hallway, or I really did dream it all.
I weave my fingers into his hair and hook a leg around his waist.
Either way, it’ll all be better now.