26
Shoard Downs
The furnace room used to terrify me.
I stood in the basement back in New York, staring down the long, dank hallway that took me into the belly of our building.
Doing the laundry was the chore I loathed most about keeping house. Whenever I had to come down here, I’d get the strangest inalienable chill. The clicking pipes, the damp air, the lightless churn; even children know there’s a reason to fear this place.
I clutched the paper sack closer to my chest. I’d wrapped the parcel in an old, stained towel.
The roar of the furnace built to a low thrum that made the edges of my vision shake the closer I drew. I cast about for the crook I could use to pull open the mouth of it.
I shielded my face from the heat with the lump in my arms and stretched out long with the crook, fixing it around the handle and heaving it open with a clumsy lurch. The hot, bright breath of it washed over me with a hissing belch and the shriek of metal.
I took two quick steps forward, hurled the bundle into the fire, and hauled the belly of the burner shut again. I set the crook back against the wall and caught my breath, setting both hands heavily on my hips as I stared at the flames eating away the last of my most damning secret.
“Every day of mine,” I panted very softly, “is a gift.”
I turned on my heel and hurried out of the basement.
Up in the apartment, I scoured my hands in the bathroom. When I sat down to use the toilet, I ran my mental list of what still remained to be done to resume life here after Lake Sumner: Burn the clothes, done. Collect the mail that was forwarded to the post office, Wesley was doing that now. Restock the groceries, whenever; we’d get takeout until one of us felt un-rattled enough to cook. Get a drink with Edie, Fridays were her busy days; I’d probably see her on Sunday at the earliest.
Go to the doctor, too. I’d have to make an appointment. I’d have to…
I stopped short in the middle of my list when I noticed the gusset of my shorts. The familiar surprise of a dark stain stopped me cold.
I blinked.
Well, that would come out with a cold-water soak.
Or I could just go back downstairs and throw it in the furnace.
I started laughing before I could stop myself, a sick sense of exhaustion and relief and the briefest kick of true regret swirling through me. I doubled over and pressed my forehead against my knees.
“Easy,” I hissed. I slapped myself once on the side of the head, sucked in a shaking breath, and soothed my hand back over it as I let out a breath. “Easy, Jack.”
It hadn’t amounted to anything, all that grief and wretched anger. I’d just been late. Simple as. Back now to square one.
Like it never happened.
I sat up, shuddered, and set myself back to rights.
When I stood, I stepped out of the shorts and washed my hands again. I looked up, just over the edge of my shoulder, and found the Lady leaning against the small white tiles of the opposite wall. She was still in her nightgown, but the blood was gone.
“Welcome home,” she said.
I opened the cold water tap and splashed it shallowly against the sides of my neck. “I thought you were through with me.”
“I figured you—”
“You figured I, what,” I said, not looking her in the eye, “didn’t have the courage to do it? That I’d have botched it like you did?”
The smallest shudder of surprise twitched into the Lady’s carriage. Her gaze fell flat, empty with unexpected hurt. I had wounded her. “I did what I did to protect myself,” she hissed, “my kingdom.”
I shut the faucet and wrung my hands dry on the towel ring, cutting a sharp glare up at her. “So did I.”
I snatched up my underthings and left the bathroom without another look in the mirror. Rounding into the kitchen, I stopped to find Wesley home from the post office. He had left the piles of envelopes in messy stacks on the kitchen table and made us both a drink without even taking his hat off first—straight pours, neat. He held mine out to me but hesitated when he saw whatever had written itself on my expression. “What’s wrong?”
Without ceremony, I held up the bloodied shorts.
Wesley frowned at the incongruence, but quickly put two and two together. He shut his eyes and set the glass on the counter. When he opened his mouth to speak, the soft draw of air clicked wetly in the silence. “Goddamn it, Jack.” He paused, swallowed, and shook his head. “I’m sorry for all of it.”
“So am I.”
I hunted the bottle of Wild Turkey from the cabinet above the sink. Only three pulls were left, and I ripped off the cap to suck down two of them straight from the neck.
Wesley stared at me, his eyes dark and heavy with sorrow as though the distance between us was an endless, fallow tundra. “Are you?”
Instead of answering, I drank the last mouthful of the bottle and dropped it noisily into the sink.
The city welcomed us back with the affection of not having skipped a single beat in our absence. There was strange comfort in knowing a place could persist so steadily without us.
A friend of a friend was hosting a salon on the far end of the East Village, which promised to be perfectly avant-garde and at least middlingly entertaining. I was looking forward to distracting myself, diving fully back into the churn of currents that had absolutely nothing to do with me, and hoped Wesley would find some solace in it as well.
Unfortunately, the gossip well had been a bit dry of late. Everyone and their mother at the party wanted to hear stories about the summer directly from the horses’ mouths so they could compare notes on what that place had been like.
I was better at shaking them off than Wesley. This time, for the first time in a very long time, I was the one flitting through the party like an overeager pollinator—practically drunk on the welcome influx of strangers, and questionable art, and even more questionable cocktails. I felt more and more like myself with each passing conversation.
Whenever I glanced at Wesley, he was tarrying by the bar cart, only halfway engaged with whomever was trying to bend his ear.
It was different than usual, but it was fine.
Until it wasn’t.
The specific sound of Wesley’s voice yanked me from a blessedly mundane discussion about Pomeranians with a modern dancer—“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
Shattering to silence, the pleasant thrum of chatter stilled.
I excused myself and hurried in the direction of clattering glass and the polite yet urgent tones of bystanders not wanting to get involved with a tussle that was clearly developing into a brawl.
Wesley had some poor man with a waxed mustache by the collar, his fist drawn back, and evidence of the spilled drink that likely started the row splashed over one elbow. I threw my hands around his arm and held it firm before he could swing—he whirled on me, and for just a moment I saw a blinding flash of how horrifying it was to be on the receiving end of Wesley Shoard’s combative streak.
My breath caught in my throat. Wesley realized it was me and overcorrected so sharply he nearly stumbled backward. I was still holding on to his jacket and only just kept him standing.
He caught his breath for a moment. The crowd was staring. I glanced around and did my best to look apologetic for the both of us.
“Is this your husband?” the man with the mustache demanded. He was tidying his bow tie and glaring at Wesley—one of his eye sockets had a pink mark in a circle around it, and I saw the shattered monocle on the floor at his feet.
“We were just leaving,” I said. I made to pull Wesley after me.
The man snorted. “You’d do well to keep that hound on a shorter leash.”
Wesley surged forward to lunge at him again, but I already had a better grip on his arm. The man stumbled out of the way, his face blotchy-red and his jowls trembling.
“We were just leaving,” I repeated through my teeth, and hauled us to the foyer.
At the coatrack, Wesley snapped my jacket out flat with a touch more furor than he probably intended. He didn’t look at me when I angled for his gaze, averting his fevered stare to the far corner of the wall.
I didn’t push the issue until we were halfway down the eight flights of stairs back to the street. I turned to stop him on a landing and glanced around to make sure nobody else was about to hear.
“Honestly, Wesley,” I hissed, “our first night back?”
“It’s not our first night,” Wesley growled. He leaned heavily against the wall. I scoffed.
“That isn’t the point, and you know it.”
“I can’t do it, Margaret!” Wesley blurted. He stared at the peeling plaster across from him as he made a flailing gesture with one hand in front of him. He dropped his voice to a fevered whisper: “I’m not—I’m—I’m not built for all this fucking guilt!”
I held my ground and stared at him until he turned to look at me, miserable and angry and so hollowly sad I wanted to look away—but I held it.
“We did it together, didn’t we?” I asked, pitched low.
Wesley hesitated for a moment, then nodded. I reached up and tidied a lock of his hair bounding down over his brow.
“And we’ll live with it together,” I said gently. “We’ll live. Won’t we?”
He chewed on the edge of his tongue and still wouldn’t look at me. I slid my hand down to his cheek and held it there, not pushing but simply holding him, until he sighed with a long defeated sniff and his gaze swung listlessly to meet mine.
“Won’t we?” I whispered.
I watched the quivering, subtle flicker of his eyes tracing my face, the high thrum of his pulse in his neck.
“I’m going to ask you a serious question,” Wesley said under his breath.
“Ask away.”
“Where did you put your conscience?”
“I tied it to a pile of bricks and drowned it in a lake.”
Wesley’s pupils widened softly, unblinking. He wet his lips with a shallow drag of his tongue and shook his head. “Who are you?”
“Your wife.”
Wesley scowled to himself and stared at his feet. I stared at him until he turned his face to kiss my palm.
“Come on,” he muttered, and took my hand to lead the rest of the way down the stairs.
We hailed a taxi. It had begun to spit a meager rain, the kind so weak it was little more than a simple mist hanging in the dark.
We said nothing the whole way back, staring out opposite windows as the city smeared to nothing but light and dark.