What I Shouldn’t Want

Chapter 3

NORA’S POV

I woke up with my face in the pillow and my shirt on inside out.

For about three seconds, I didn't remember. Then I did, all at once, and my stomach dropped so hard I thought I might be sick. I lay there staring at the wall. The light coming through the curtains was gray and thin, the kind of early morning that makes everything look like evidence.

My head was pounding. My mouth tasted like a burnt penny. And between my legs I was sore in a way I had not been sore in a long time, a low ache that I felt every time I shifted.

I put the pillow over my face and said, "Oh my God," into it.

Daniel's side of the bed was still made. I hadn't slept on the left side in eight months, and I hadn't changed the sheets on his side either. It was the one thing I'd never told Dana. I looked at that flat, smooth stretch of blue comforter and I couldn't breathe right.

I had slept with his brother. In his mother's house. Fourteen feet from where we'd hung our wedding photo.

I sat up, and the room swayed. I pulled my shirt off, turned it right side out, and put it back on like that would fix something. Then I stood at the bedroom door with my hand on the knob and listened.

Nothing. No voices. A cabinet closed somewhere, soft.

He was still here.

I'd half hoped he'd left. I'd half hoped he hadn't. I couldn't decide which one scared me more.

I brushed my teeth, splashed water on my face, and tied my hair back. In the mirror, I looked like a woman who'd been crying and drinking and having s*x on a kitchen counter, because I was. I had a red mark on my collarbone. I pulled my collar up over it and went out.

The smell hit me first. Coffee.

Caleb was standing at the stove with his back to me, in yesterday's jeans and a T-shirt he must have dug out of the truck. His hair stuck up on one side. He'd cleaned the kitchen. The glass was washed and sitting upside down on a towel, the counter was wiped, and the whiskey bottle was gone.

"Morning," he said without turning around.

"Morning."

"I didn't know how you took it. I guess I should know that by now."

"Black," I said. "Two sugars."

He nodded and poured it. When he handed me the mug, we were careful not to touch. His fingers stopped an inch from mine. I took the mug by the handle and looked at the floor.

"I'm not good at this," he said.

"Neither am I."

"I didn't sleep."

"I know. I heard the couch." I took a sip. It was too hot, and I let it burn. "I didn't either."

We stood on opposite sides of the kitchen like two people waiting for a bus. The counter sat between us, clean and shining, and I did not look at it. I could feel exactly where it was, the way you can feel a bruise.

"Nora, about last night”

"We can't do it again."

It came out fast, faster than I meant. He stopped with his mouth open. Then he closed it and nodded slowly.

"Okay."

"That's it? Okay?"

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know." I put the mug down too hard, and coffee slopped over my hand. "I want you to say something that makes it not true. I want you to say it was the whiskey, that it didn't mean anything, that we were both out of our minds. I want you to say that so I can believe it."

"I'm not going to say that."

"Why not?"

"Because I'd be lying, and you'd know." His voice was steady, but his hands were clenched on the edge of the sink. "Daniel could always tell when I was lying. I think you can, too."

My throat closed up. I turned toward the window so he wouldn't see my face. The lake was flat and pale, and a heron stood in the shallows, not moving, waiting on something.

"He was your brother," I said.

"I know."

"He was my husband. He's been dead eight months, Caleb. Eight months. I haven't even cleaned out his closet."

"I know that, too."

"Then how are you so calm?"

"I'm not."

I looked at him. His jaw was tight, and there were dark circles under his eyes, and when he let go of the sink, I saw that his knuckles were white.

"I'm not calm," he said quietly. "I'm trying not to say anything that'll make you hate me. It's taking everything I've got."

I wanted to cross the room. That was the thing. I wanted to put my forehead against his chest and let him hold me up, and the wanting made me so angry I could have thrown the mug through the window.

"Okay," I said instead. "So this didn't happen. We were drunk, we were sad, and we both made a mistake. We don't tell anybody. Not your mother, not Dana, nobody."

"Nora."

"Promise me."

He held my eyes for a long moment. "I won't tell anyone."

"And it doesn't happen again."

He didn't answer that one.

"Caleb."

"I'll promise the first part," he said. "I'm not going to promise something I might break."

"That's not good enough."

"It's what I've got."

I opened my mouth to argue, and that was when we both heard the tires on the gravel.

We froze.

A car door slammed. Then another sound, one I knew as well as my own name: the rattle of a casserole dish lid.

"No," I whispered. "No, no. It's my mother-in-law."

"I know whose car that is."

"What time is it?"

"Eight." He was already moving, grabbing the blanket off the couch and shoving it into the closet. I snatched his coffee mug off the counter and dumped it into the sink, as if she wouldn't notice two people in the kitchen at eight in the morning. He kicked his boots under the couch. I looked down at myself, at my wrinkled shirt and bare feet and the mark I'd hidden under my collar, and I wanted to run into the lake.

"Fix your hair," he said.

"What?"

"Your hair. It's..." He gestured vaguely. "Up. On the side."

I smoothed it flat with both hands. My heart was going so hard I could hear it in my ears. The front door opened without a knock. Marianne never knocked. She'd said once that you didn't knock at your own children's house, and she had never counted me as anything but one of her own.

"Nora? Are you up? I brought you that chicken thing you liked."

She walked into the kitchen with a foil-covered dish held out in front of her like an offering. She was in her good slacks and a cardigan, her silver hair pinned perfectly, her face composed. Marianne Brooks had buried a husband and a son and had not once let anyone see her cry in public.

She saw me and smiled. Then she saw Caleb, and the smile stayed in place, but something behind it went still.

"Well," she said. "You're both here."

"Mom," Caleb said. "I stayed over. Couch. Nora called last night, she was... She didn't want to be alone."

"I see."

She set the dish on the counter, right on the spot where I'd sat, and I felt my face go hot. Marianne glanced at the clean glass. She glanced at the two bare feet, mine, and at the one sock on the floor by the couch, his. She didn't say a thing. She turned the dish a quarter turn so the handle faced me.

"You look tired, honey," she said.

"I didn't sleep well."

"Mm." She looked at me a beat too long. "Grief is like that."

"Yes."

"Caleb, you need a shave."

"Yes, ma'am."

She nodded as if something had been confirmed. Then she brushed her hands off, smoothed her cardigan, and said, in the same easy tone, "I'm having the family for dinner next Sunday. Eight months. I thought we should all be at the table together. All of us." She looked at Caleb, then at me. "I'd like you both there. No excuses."

"We'll be there," I said, too quickly.

"Good." She patted my arm on her way past, and her hand was warm and dry. "Eat something, Nora. You're getting thin."

Then she was gone, the front door shutting softly behind her. We heard the car start, the gravel crunching, the engine fading down the road.

Neither of us moved for a long moment.

"She knows," I said.

"She doesn't know."

"She looked at the sock."

"Nora, she doesn't…”

"She looked at the sock, Caleb."

He rubbed his face with both hands and laughed, a short, helpless sound, and then I was laughing too, and it turned wet halfway through. I pressed my knuckles against my mouth. He didn't try to touch me. He just stood there, a few feet away, and let me do it.

When I could breathe again, I picked up my phone. Three texts from Dana, the latest sent at 7:42: Hey. You alive? Call me. I'm serious.

I stared at the screen.

"Sunday," Caleb said quietly.

"Yeah."

"Think we can get through it?"

I looked at the clean glass drying on the towel and the casserole sitting where I'd fallen apart the night before.

"I don't know," I said.