The Sin Between Us

Chapter 3: Something to be careful about

Just for a beat …. just long enough to decide something.

Then he came out and sat on the porch railing a few feet to my left, facing the yard, and didn't say anything.

I didn't say anything either….

Inside, someone made a noise about a bad call. My grandmother's voice rose again.

A car passed on the street out front.

"You sent me a text," I said.

My voice came out even. I was grateful for that.

He didn't pretend.

"I know," he said.

"And then nothing."

"I know."

"For three weeks."

"Hyacinth…"

"I'm not angry." I wasn't….

That was the honest thing, the thing that was harder to explain than anger would have been.

"I'm not trying to make it into something. I just want to know what it was."

He exhaled. It was quiet, but I heard it.

He was looking at the yard, jaw set in that way that meant he was working on something internally, hands resting loose on the railing in a way that told me he was actively keeping them loose.

I had known him long enough to read the things he did with his body when he was trying to keep his body from saying things.

"Jude."

"Hyacinth."

Low. Careful. A warning that had something folded inside it, something that wasn't quite warning.

I turned to look at him. The porch light was doing something soft to the edges of everything, and in it his face was less guarded than it had been all evening.

For just a moment I could see what was underneath the steadiness he wore so well, something that looked a lot like a man who had been carrying something heavy for a while and was getting tired of carrying.

Then the back door banged open hard enough to hit the siding.

"Grandma wants everybody in for dessert!"

My cousin Jake leaned out, pointing at both of us with the authority of someone who had been appointed messenger and was taking it seriously.

"She said everybody, and she looked at the empty porch when she said it, so."

Jude turned. "We'll be right in."

Jake disappeared back inside. The door swung shut. I stood up and brushed off the back of my jeans. When I looked at him he was already standing, and whatever had been there a moment ago was tucked back behind his face where I couldn't follow it.

We went inside and ate pie.

My grandmother's dessert prayer was five minutes longer than any dessert had ever warranted.

She held both of my hands on one side and my grandfather's on the other and spoke to God with the familiarity of a woman who had known Him personally for seventy-three years and felt comfortable with a little meandering.

Around the table, everyone's heads were bowed, eyes closed, and I stood across from Jude and looked at the tablecloth and listened to my heart do something it had no business doing at a family dessert.

Afterwards, coats came out. The older ones started moving toward the door slowly, the way they always did, not quite leaving, just beginning the long process of leaving that could take another forty-five minutes.

I ended up in the hallway crowd, reaching past my aunt for my jacket on the hook, and somehow he was right beside me.

I kept my voice low enough that it was only for him.

"I missed you," I said.

"These last few weeks. At dinner. I noticed you weren't there."

He went still.

Not visibly. Not in any way that anyone around us would have caught.

But I was standing close enough to feel it, that full-body pause, like something had landed on him and he was deciding whether to let it settle.

My aunt said his name from somewhere in the living room doorway. Something about saying goodbye to Grandpa.

He turned and answered her and went, and the hallway filled in behind him, and the moment was gone.

He had no reason to stay after dessert. The food was finished, the game was winding down, the oldest members of the family were giving the specific kind of tired smiles that meant they were ready for quiet.

People filtered out slowly, in pairs and small groups, until the house was down to a comfortable few.

Jude was still there.

Standing in my grandmother's living room talking to whoever was still talking, about nothing in particular, contributing easily to the end-of-evening conversations that didn't require much.

I watched him from the kitchen doorway while I helped my mother put containers of leftovers into a bag and pretended I wasn't watching.

Why are you still here, I thought. And then: Don't ask that. Don't let it mean something it might not mean.

When he finally said his goodnights he went around the room the way he always did, the same warmth, the same word, the same easy unhurried affection he had for all of them.

My grandmother got a kiss on the cheek. My grandfather got a hand on the shoulder and something quiet that made him nod.

My aunt got a promise to call about the thing he'd been meaning to call about.

He said goodnight to me the same way he said it to my grandmother.

I drove home telling myself that meant nothing.

Then I drove home telling myself it meant something. That the sameness was intentional, that being careful meant there was something to be careful about, that a man who wasn't feeling anything didn't need to be careful.

I pulled into my parking spot and left the engine running. The street was quiet and the radio was on something I hadn't been listening to for twenty minutes. I sat there with my hands on the wheel and stared at the middle distance and told myself to stop building architecture out of things that might just be nothing.

My phone buzzed.

A photo. Just the sky above my grandparents' house, that specific shade of deep blue it goes in the last minutes before full dark, when the light has left but the darkness hasn't fully arrived yet.

Taken from the driveway, I could tell by the angle, by the particular edge of the roofline visible at the bottom corner of the frame. The sky I had been standing under forty minutes ago.

No caption. No words. Nothing written beneath it.

He had walked to his car, stopped in the driveway, looked up, and taken a photograph of the sky.

And then sent it to me. Just me!.

Without explanation or context or any of the words that might have told me what it meant.

I sat in my car with the engine running and stared at it.

It was such a strange thing to send. It was such a completely, precisely his thing to send.

A door opened just wide enough to let light through, then held there, not opened further, not closed.

Just held.

I screenshotted it. Turned the engine off. Sat another minute in the dark.

Then I went inside, set my bag down by the door, and stood in my kitchen in the quiet of my apartment.

I thought about four words at two in the morning. I thought about a photograph of a sky. I thought about a man who went still when I said I'd missed him, in a way that no one else had seen.

I thought about the difference between someone being careful and someone being afraid.

I put my phone face-down on the counter, went to bed, and didn't sleep for a long time.