7

Even though he’d lived with Garnet for two weeks, Thomas was still aware of the different fragrances subtly perfuming the air in their apartment, even when she was gone. Bath oil and pastel soaps, scented candles, hand lotion and more. Like the woman, the result could not be ignored. Together the scents were bold yet elusive, flamboyant but somehow starkly elemental. The flowers in the Garden of Eden had undoubtedly combined the same divergent notes. The woman in the Garden of Eden had undoubtedly combined them, too.

The apartment was silent now except for the noise of cars passing in the street below. When Garnet was home, the apartment was never silent. But Garnet was gone. Finn, Tex’s cop husband, had arrived just minutes before to whisk her off to Mother and Child.

Finn was a gift. He had appeared the morning after Garnet moved into Thomas’s apartment, just—he claimed—to pass the time with her. For the past two weeks he had continued to appear faithfully each morning the clinic was open. Finn drank a cup of coffee while Garnet finished dressing; then he walked her to work. Casually, as if nothing could please him more. Casually, eyes darting right and left, hand hovering close enough to his gun that anyone watching would have thought he just might be expecting trouble.

So far there had been none.

In the stillness, Thomas located his worn-out briefcase. He had a little time before he was scheduled to be in his office, but the apartment seemed unwelcoming, as if all the life had been sucked from it with Garnet’s departure.

Two weeks had passed. Two weeks of a marriage that was, by anyone’s standards, a fraud. Yet there were times when Thomas felt married to Garnet. They had already fallen into a routine. He arose in the morning before she did, and while he showered, she made breakfast. Invariably it was manna from heaven. She could take the simplest ingredients and cook food fit for the gods. Sometimes she made flour tortillas filled with beans spiced with garlic and herbs, ham, scrambled eggs, cheese. The list of fillings was as long as the woman’s imagination.

Afterward he cleaned the kitchen while she showered and changed. She sang in the shower. Her voice was throaty and sensual, and she always chose love songs. Steam edged through the cracks in the doorway, scented steam that penetrated the pores of his skin—but never more than the songs did. When she emerged dressed in white, he didn’t stare, but secretly he searched out the small details that made her unique. The colorful costume jewelry. The ribbon or scarf in her hair. The bright sheen of her cheeks and lips...

He caught himself staring at nothing. He didn’t want to reflect on the ways that Garnet had changed his life in the weeks of their marriage. Reflection was a pastime for those unscathed by the dragon.

Downstairs he unlocked the front door of the church and left his study door wide open, even though doing so defeated the purpose of his small electric heater. He had no appointments to prepare for. He had made his office hours known to his congregation and to anyone else who might be interested. He was available to anyone who might need him during that time, easy to find, receptive and, more often than not, alone.

Once he had needed a secretary to monitor his time and schedule his appointments. She had been trained to knock discreetly and to apologize to whatever parishioner was in the office before she ushered in Thomas’s next appointment. There had been no breaks, no time for meditation or prayer. He’d had a running argument with the church board. The board had hired another associate minister, and there had been funds available to hire an assistant to lighten his load, but Thomas had refused the help.

Now he didn’t need help; he didn’t even need a secretary. And he had all the time for prayer that any man of God could want.

More than this man of God had need of.

His desk was empty, no stacks of phone messages to answer, no carefully coded correspondence needing his attention. His desk was as clear of self-important hustle and bustle as his life. There were a telephone, a blotter and one sheet of scratched-up notes for Sunday’s sermon that he had worked on the previous evening.

He stared at the notes. Evenings, after he and Garnet returned from work, were fraught with subtlety and innuendo. Dinner was as creative, as sensuous a treat, as breakfast. While Garnet chopped and sautéed they talked about their days as two strangers talk, but sometimes there were moments of surprising intimacy. The shared smile, the clink of glasses, the husky laugh, the insightful comment.

He had come to look forward to that time together as he hadn’t looked forward to anything in years. Sometimes during the day he found himself thinking of things he would tell Garnet; sometimes he found himself thinking of things she had told him. Sometimes—as now—he thought of the curves of her body, the forbidden length of leg under a satin nightshirt, a glimpse of her neck when she lifted her hair.

At night, after dinner, when he knew she lay in the next room listening to music or reading, thoughts of her kept him awake.

He had married Garnet to protect her and for no reason other than protection. Now he wondered how he was going to protect himself.

By the time the front door slammed, there was a second sheet of paper, even more scratched up, to attest to his struggle to concentrate. But he still had no firm idea of what he was going to say on Sunday. He leaned back in his chair and waited for the visitor.

Ema came to the doorway and smiled her tentative smile. “I’m bothering you, aren’t I?”

He stood in welcome. Something like relief filled him at the sight of another human face. “Of course not.”

“I could come back.”

“Sit down, Ema.”

“I can only stay a minute.”

“Make it two, at least.”

She smiled, exactly the same frightened doe smile, and sat. “I shouldn’t be here.”

“No?”

“I told Ron I was going out for groceries.’’

“And he’d be angry if he found out you were here?”

“He...keeps track of me.” She looked around the room, as if hoping there would be something there to comment on.

“Are the girls in school?”

“They’re supposed to be. They’re.. .they’re at a neighbor’s.”

He sat a little straighter, alert now to barely perceptible signals that she was distraught. She was twisting the handle of her purse in her hands. He was so used to seeing her eyes red-rimmed and swollen that he hadn’t noticed immediately that this time the tears were fresh.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

“Did you know my real name is Emerald?” She laughed, and the sound wrapped around his heart. “Imagine that. Someone like me with a name like Emerald. But Mama didn’t have anything else of value. Garnet’s probably told you all about that.”

“Not much.”

She looked at him as if that was hard to believe.

“Your sister and I...” His voice trailed off. He couldn’t find words to explain his marriage to Garnet.

“I know. She told me why you married her. But I thought...”

“Thought what?”

“Well, Garnet’s pretty good at making the best of things.” She looked away. “Anyway, Mama named us all for jewels. She said it was the only way she’d ever have any. You know? She called us her little treasures.”

“And you were treated like treasures?”

She seemed to consider the question. “By Mama,” she said at last. “But we were poor, and this is a hard place to grow up. Garnet and Jade, well, they turned out different from me. Jade ran away and started a new life. Garnet just fought everything that stood between her and the kind of world she thought the Corners should be. And I...” Her voice trailed off again, and so did her gaze.

“You got married to a man who beats you,” Thomas said.

“Well, not all the time.”

“Once is too often, Ema.”

“Do I deserve better?” She forced her gaze to his. “I want to know, Reverend Stonehill. Do I?”

He marveled at how simple some answers were to give. “Yes.”

“Ron says women started all the trouble in the world.”

“Ron is a sick and violent man.”

“I can’t please him.”

“No one could.”

“I try. I cook foods he likes. I keep the apartment clean. I don’t complain when he comes home drunk.”

“It comes down to two choices, Ema. You can stay with him, knowing that things will stay the same or get even worse. Or you can leave him and start a new life for yourself and the girls. But there is no third choice. You can’t stay and hope that he’ll change.”

“He doesn’t mean to hit me.”

“He does. And he means to hurt you. And someday he may mean to hurt your daughters.”

“Oh, he’s never--”

“Even if he never lifts a finger to Jody and Lisa, he’s still teaching them it’s all right for men to hit women. When your girls grow up, they may look for men like their father, and if they do, they’ll probably act just like their mother when those men hit them.”

The handle of her purse snapped in two. Ema looked down at her lap. “I don’t want to teach them that.”

“Do you want to stay with your husband?”

“Is it all right... does the Bible say... ?”

“Marriage is sacred, but only if both people treat it that way. Love, honor and cherish aren’t answers to a multiple choice question. Until death do us part doesn’t mean that one partner has the right to cause the death of another.”

She flinched. “Sometimes—” She looked up. “I hate him.”

“I’m sure you do.”

“But that’s wrong.”

“Sometimes it takes anger to get a job done. You’ll have plenty of time after you leave Ron to work on forgiveness.”

“That’s not what the others told me. You’re not like any other pastor I’ve been to.”

He doubted that, in the most important ways, he was like any pastor anywhere, but he wasn’t going to explain that. “This is not the Middle Ages, and I’m not alone in this,” he said. “I can promise you that there are pastors all over the world who would give you the same advice.”

She nodded, as if absorbing that.

“Do you have a place to go?” he asked.

“Mama offered to let me come there. She lives in Florida, and she has friends who will help. I think it’s too far for Ron to follow me. Jade offered, too—”

“Why aren’t the girls in school today?”

She twisted what was left of her purse handle. She seemed to be debating. Finally she spoke. “I’ve got bus tickets.”

“For when?-”

“Ron goes to work at one. Our bus leaves at two.”

“Does Garnet know?”

“I thought maybe you could tell her?”

“Why don’t you tell her yourself?”

“Because she’d make a speech about how I’m finally doing the right thing. And I know she’d be right, but I don’t want to hear her say it.”

“May I say it?”

She looked up again. “Please.”

“You are doing the right thing.”

“Am I really?”

He nodded.

His words seemed to strengthen her. “Will you tell Garnet I love her? Tell her I just wanted to do this because I know it’s right, not because somebody pushed me.”

“And will you call?”

“When I’m all settled, I’ll call.”

“Good.”

“You won’t tell Ron where I am if he comes asking around?”

“I don't know where you're going. I didn’t let you tell me exactly.”

She smiled a little, and for a moment the worry lines in her forehead smoothed. He saw Garnet in the momentary sparkle of her eyes. Ema’s eyes were green, like her sister’s. And someday they might sparkle often.

“You’ve helped me,” she said. “I needed a place to come where I could think. I needed a place where somebody cared about me, not because they had to, like family, but just because I was a human being. You made me remember that’s what I am. You and your God. Ron made me forget, but you helped me remember.”

“Don’t forget again,” he said.

“I’m going to try not to.” She stood. “I’ll get a few groceries, then I’m going back to Ron. For the last time. I’ll be okay,” she added, before he could ask. “He waits till he’s done with work to start his heavy drinking. He’ll really have something to be mad about when he comes home tonight, won’t he?”

Thomas stood and walked her to the door. “He’ll always find something to be mad about.”

She paused in the doorway, then shyly rose on her tiptoes and kissed his cheek. “Goodbye. Take care of my sister. And thank you again. You gave me something to hold on to. It’s the first good thing that’s happened to me in a long, long time.”

She had been gone for minutes before he turned back to his desk. He was glad he had given Ema something to hold on to. He gazed upward, although he had never really believed in a bearded, complacent God on a cloud-borne throne.

“Does that make me a hypocrite?” he asked out loud. “She’s holding on, and I let go.”

There was only silence, a greater silence than he had ever heard. But perhaps years ago he had never taken the time to listen for answers, anyway.

“I don’t know where she is, Ron. I just hope it’s somewhere thousands of miles away.” Garnet held the telephone receiver six inches from her ear. When the torrent of abuse receded she responded. “Try any of those things, Celabraze, and I’ll have you in jail so fast your head will be spinning for a week! I’m not my sister. I’d like nothing better than to see you turned into fish bait and fed to the sharks.”

“Sharks?” Thomas asked, after she had hung up.

Garnet tried to control the anger that had boiled over at Ron’s accusations. “Big ones. Ema’s left Ron. He went home early, probably got the itch to beat her up before midnight for a change, so he sacrificed drinks number ten through fifteen. Anyway, he found a note. Do you happen to know where she went?”

“Somewhere she and the girls will be safe.” Thomas poured Garnet a glass of mineral water. The clinic had been open late that evening and, as always, Finn had escorted her right to the church’s front door. Ron’s phone call had come only minutes after her arrival.

His face was inscrutable, and for once she couldn’t pass it off as vintage Thomas. “So you know? And you’re not going to tell me where?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to know. You don’t, either, in case Ron goes to the police and accuses her of kidnapping the children.”

She told herself he was right. She told herself to be calm. “I don’t think he will. There are too many people who could testify about the way he beat Ema. And he has a whole file drawer to himself at the cop shop. The law would move very slowly to assist Ron Celabraze.”

“Then a toast might be in order.” He lifted his glass.

“Ema told you, but not me.”

He drank alone.

“Why?” she asked. “I wouldn’t have said ‘I told you so.’ She knows me better than that.”

He heard the hurt under the anger. Garnet was struggling for control, but the wound was apparent. “She wanted to be sure that you and everybody else knew she was doing it on her own. It was her decision completely.”

“Then why did she tell you?”

“I think she needed an objective stamp of approval.”

“God’s?”

“Maybe so. I couldn’t give her that, but she got mine.”

“She thinks you speak for God, Thomas. They all do. I watch their faces on Sunday morning. Those people drift in from the street to hear you preach, and they all think you speak for God.” She stood up and strode to the refrigerator to see what she could make for dinner.

“I don’t. And you’re angry.”

“She’s my sister, and you’re nothing to her!”

He rose and went to stand behind her. He hadn’t expected this. He’d thought she would be happy that Ema had found the courage to leave her husband. When Garnet straightened, he put his hands on her shoulders. “I’m nothing,” he agreed. “But what she found at the church is something real and vital, Garnet. Maybe you don’t understand it. Maybe I don’t—”

She turned. “What? You’re going to say you don’t understand it, either? Come off it. God’s what you do for a living.”

They were married, yet she didn’t know him at all. That fact had never been more apparent to him. Nor had it ever been more apparent that he could never share his heart with her.

He grasped her shoulders again. “I’m trying to say that your sister found the strength to do what she’s needed to do for a long time. She found it in her own way. I’m sure if you hadn’t stood by her for so long, supported her, spoken your heart to her, she never would have found it at all. But now she’s made the break. Be happy.”

She couldn’t pull her gaze from his. Little by little the anger drained away, until finally she spoke. “Damn it, Thomas. I’m sorry. What’s wrong with me? Of course I’m happy for her. I was just thinking about myself. I’m selfish and vain and envious. Now that Ema’s gone, you’ll have to work on changing me.”

“I don’t want to change anything about you.”

As she often did, she found a refuge in audacity. “No? I don’t have any of the qualities a man like you needs in a wife. I’d need to be docile.” She lifted her arms and pulled her hair from her face in the semblance of a bun. “Self-sacrificing.” She lowered her eyes. “Reverent.” She began to hum something that sounded like “The Old Rugged Cross” with a reggae beat.

He felt a stab of irritation. “Since you can’t be any of those things, then just be yourself.”

“Well, at least there won’t be any danger that someone might take this marriage seriously.”

He was beginning to take it seriously. He realized it before her words had stopped echoing through the kitchen. He had offered her the charade of a marriage for complex reasons, but he had never expected it to profoundly change his life. Now he saw that nothing could be further from the truth.

His hands dropped to his sides. He had kept himself from her in all the important ways. She was, for all purposes, married to a stranger. And most of the time she had kept herself from him, as if by open agreement. Yet somehow she had crept into his life, into his thoughts, into...

“Don’t tell me you’re taking it seriously,” she said, when he didn’t answer. “Thomas, I’m closer to the boy who delivers clean linen for the clinic than I am to you.”

He turned away. “Don’t let me keep you from making dinner.”

“Answer me!”

“You didn’t ask a question.” He felt her hand on his arm.

She was still riding the wave of emotion that had crested with the news of Ema’s flight. Humor, irreverence, repression. None had brought her to firm emotional ground. Now she couldn’t control her words. “Here’s the question. Are you taking this marriage seriously? Or are we just playing house like a couple of preschoolers?”

“You cared about Ema, and now she’s gone. You’re feeling a lot of things. Don’t take them out on me.”

“Cool, Thomas. Collected, rational. Thank you for the objective analysis, but I’m still waiting for an answer to my question.”

He turned. She was only inches away. The mocking light was gone from her eyes. She was awash in emotion. He understood why. The last weeks had brought so many changes in her life. Even Garnet could only shrug off her feelings for so long.

He understood so much, but he felt so much more. She moved closer to him.

“You don’t tell me anything about yourself,” she said, eyes narrowed. “You don’t share your feelings. You don’t touch me. You don’t even smile very often. Maybe we agreed to all this. Maybe it’s best this way. But don’t go looking at me like the rules changed and you forgot to mention it. Don’t go looking like I’ve wounded you because I said out loud what we both know. This marriage is not serious. I’m nothing to you, and even if you get just the teeniest twinge of desire for me sometimes, the Reverend Thomas Stonehill is too much of a god himself to be tempted by someone as lowly as Garnet Anthony.”

“We were both wrong to think we could pull this off without it affecting us.”

“I’m not affected. I sleep in that bedroom and I cook in this kitchen. Sometimes I talk to the God-fearing robot who passes through these rooms.” She stopped. Slowly her hand dropped from his arm. “Damn!” She faced the refrigerator.

He understood turning points. There had been some so crucial in his life that, after them, nothing had been the same. He recognized this one. Every part of him screamed that he should back away and give her time to compose herself.

Instead he put his arms around her. She was as tense as he had expected; he could feel the tension everywhere he touched. She was also warm and enticingly female, and immediately his body cried out for what hers had to offer. She didn’t yield easily, but he pulled her against him. “Maybe you’re not affected,” he said. “But I am.”

She was very quiet. For a moment he wasn’t even sure she was breathing. “What’s wrong with me?” she asked at last.

“A very difficult situation.”

“What’s so difficult? You’ve given me a place to stay, protection, your name—just in case it helps to scare off the little boys with the guns! How can that be difficult?”

“Because we’ve taken a sacred institution and made a mockery out of it.”

“Sacred? Maybe in the world you come from. Here marriage is just an institution, like prison or the closest psychiatric hospital. My mother was married to Ema’s father. It lasted six months before he left her pregnant and alone. She thought she was married to my father until she discovered he was already married to somebody else. She didn’t bother fooling herself about Jade’s father.”

“It’s a sacred institution.”

“Was your marriage sacred, Thomas?” She turned in his arms. “Your real marriage, not this one. Did God bless it? Did He honor it? When Patricia died, did you have that to comfort you?”

“I had nothing to comfort me.”

She saw pain in his eyes, a pain so deep, so powerful, it threatened to suck her into its vortex. She had been prepared to taunt him again, but she found she couldn’t. Somehow she knew there was nothing she could tell him that he didn’t tell himself every hour before dawn.

“I could give you comfort,” she said softly. The words came from nowhere, yet she didn’t want to call them back. “Maybe it wouldn’t be enough, but it would be something.”

Her breasts pressed against his chest; her scent enveloped him. As he stood with his arms around her, powerless to release her, she smoothed her hands up them. He felt the cool slide of her palms on his neck, against his heated cheeks. Her fingers burrowed into his hair, and she pressed his mouth to hers.

The taste, the feel of her lips against his, was as pleasurable as he remembered. His arms tightened around her. She was soft and giving; her warm flesh was as pliant as her spirit was not. She was his wife before man and God.

His hands traveled to splay against the curve of her hips. With a helpless groan he delved into the secrets of her mouth. She was everything womanly and desirable. Their tongues moved together giving and taking pleasure; their bodies moved together, too. They were married strangers, yet her touch, her curves, her taste were familiar, as if he had always partaken of them with this heady rush of desire.

He had partaken in his dreams. Thomas knew it as surely as he knew he had never touched her in these ways before. He had dreamed of her in the hours when dreams aren’t remembered, when sleep is so deep it buries all thoughts and feelings, all desires.

All desires.

Garnet drank in the heady pleasure of his body against hers. She had not indulged in fantasies about him. She had admired his body, saucily assessed the potential of his hands and lips, but she had not allowed herself to imagine being in his arms. Now she knew why. There were realities so potent that fantasy was too poor an imitation. She had known, before she had been conscious of knowing, that passion with Thomas would be light-years beyond imagination.

“Come to bed, Thomas,” she whispered against his lips. “If the rules have changed, then come to bed and make this marriage real. Even your God couldn’t object.”

She had said nothing of love and commitment, but he knew if he took her to bed everything would change. And still, he was helpless to say no.

Garnet unfastened the top button of his shirt as she kissed him. The second was as easy, and the others followed in quick succession as her trembling fingers would allow. She smoothed her hands over his chest, murmuring provocatively. She did not give herself easily or casually. She had always been wary of relationships that bound her too tightly. She was too enamored of freedom to give control of her life to anyone.

But Thomas hadn’t asked for control. He had given her freedom when he married her, given her the chance to continue doing what she had to do, to continue walking the streets of the only neighborhood she would ever call home. He wanted nothing, asked for nothing. And in return, because he made no demands, she could give him what little she had to give.

There was more, though, and as desire swept her away, she was compelled to face it. Her gift wasn’t unselfish. At that moment she wanted him with an urgency no other man had ever provoked. She wanted him inside her, where intimacy would destroy all mystery. She wanted all barriers lowered, all defenses exploded. In every way, she wanted to know the man she had married.

He kissed her forehead, her cheeks, and clasped her closer. She pressed her knee between his legs and felt his response. He wanted her, too. There was no mystery there. He was a man desiring a woman. He was not the minister, the husband of Patricia, the slayer of the Corners’ dragons. He was simply a man, like every other, a man aroused enough to enter a woman and make her his.

“Come to bed,” she repeated huskily as she started to slip his shirt over his shoulders. “It’s time, Thomas. It’s right.”

He felt her knee stroking the sensitive flesh between his thighs. Thought, doubt, creeds and rules melted away. He was nothing but a man, a man alive and hungry and aching for a woman. He felt himself growing to meet her, growing with need, bursting with desire, throbbing and aching to bury himself inside her.

And then, as strong as his response had been, as potent as his need, he was no longer ready.

If the world had depended on their joining, if all the stars in the heaven had decreed it, he could not have made her his.

Garnet felt the new tension in Thomas’s arms, in the muscles of his back. It was no longer the tension of a man bursting with passion. It was no longer the tension of a man denying himself what he most needed.

It was the tension of a man who no longer wants nor needs the woman in his arms.

She felt his response to her disappear. She shifted her weight so that she was no longer against him; then she stepped back and stared at him.

“What is it?” she whispered. “What’s wrong?”

He shook his head.

“I...” She didn’t know what to say. Humiliation washed over her. She had forced this, read signals that weren’t there. She had believed he wanted her, and she had admitted how much she wanted him. But somewhere she had gone desperately wrong.

He saw her confusion and shame. He touched her hair; it seemed to singe his skin. “Don’t,” he said. “Don’t think any of the things you’re thinking.”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“For what? For acting like a married woman? Sorry because I can’t act like a married man?” He turned away and straightened his shirt. “Can we go on like before?”

“Like before.” Something new boiled up inside her. She wanted to laugh or cry, but she choked down both. She wanted to reach out to him, but she had already learned what a mistake that would be.

“Can we go on like before?” he repeated.

“Yes. I guess... No! Are you saying we’ll pretend this didn’t happen? That one minute you wanted me and the next you thought better of it?”

“Thought?” He faced her. “Thought had nothing to do with it! Were you thinking? Was either of us thinking?”

“I was thinking that I wanted you. And somewhere along the way you were thinking you didn’t want me.”

“No!”

“Then what happened?”

“You ran up against the truth. This marriage is a charade. It can’t be real.”

“For a few minutes it felt real. It felt real to you, too. You can’t deny it.”

“It was a few minutes of dreaming.”

“Then let’s dream a little longer. Maybe we’ll wake up and find out we weren’t dreaming at all.”

“Maybe we’ll wake up and find out that we’re in the middle of a nightmare.” He put his hands on her shoulders. His eyes were bleak. “I can’t make love to you, because I can’t. Not because I don’t want to. Because I can’t.”

She stared at him, then she shook her head. “What are you saying? I don’t believe you.”

“You’re wasting your vote of confidence. I haven’t made love to a woman since Patricia died. And this isn’t the first time I’ve tried.”

“But you wanted me. I know it. It’s not something you can hide.”

“Wanting has nothing to do with it.” He dropped his hands.

“Thomas, I-”

“This wasn’t supposed to happen. I just didn’t factor in-”

“What?”

“How desirable you are.”

“If there’s something wrong there are doctors, medication, clinics—”

“I've been to doctors. There’s nothing physically wrong with me. It's all in my head and even little blue pills can't solve that.” He turned away again. “You didn’t sign on for this. I married you to keep you safe, not to make you my sex therapist, Garnet. I’m not going to try to keep you here. If you have a better alternative than this farce of a marriage, go. I’ll understand. I’ll wish you well.”

There were better alternatives. She knew that now. She could have found a more acceptable plan for her life than marriage to a man she hardly knew. But she had let Thomas rescue her, not because she had no other alternatives, but because...

“I married you because I needed your strength,” she said after moments had dragged into more. “And because I felt something for you. I don’t know, maybe just curiosity, but something.”

“Now you don’t have to be curious anymore.”

“I’ve never met anyone who was more of a man.”

His laugh was short and bitter.

There were no words in any language to reassure him. She knew that instinctively. And she knew that there were no words to reassure her. All that was left were words that should have come naturally, words like “goodbye.” And those words wouldn’t form.

“I’ll choose this over the other alternatives for now,” she said at last. “If you’ll still have me.”

“You’re welcome here.”

She wondered what it had cost him to say that. She knew she wasn’t really welcome. She would be a constant reminder of failure at the deepest level.

“I’ll make dinner,” she said.

“Don’t make anything for me.”

“Are you going out?”

“For a while.”

She watched him button his shirt and find his coat, watched as the door shut quietly behind him.

She was still awake long after midnight when she heard the door close again.