What I Shouldn’t Want

Chapter 6

CALEB’S POV

The ceiling was white and had a water stain in one corner shaped like Florida. The lamp was still on. Gray daylight pushed at the edges of the curtains, and the sheets next to me were cold. She'd been gone a while.

Then it all came back, and I lay there with my arm over my eyes.

She'd let me in. That was the part I kept turning over. After everything she'd said at the lake house, we can't, it doesn't happen again, she had unlocked her own front door and led me down the hall by the hand. And she'd picked the guest room. Not because it was close. Because it wasn't his.

I sat up and found my jeans on the floor. My shirt was across the room, and the lamp had a scrub top hanging off the shade. I almost laughed. Then I heard a sound from the kitchen, a cabinet opening and closing, and the laugh died.

The hallway was narrow, and the walls were crowded with photographs. I hadn't noticed them in the dark. Now I couldn't not. Daniel at the beach, squinting. Daniel and Nora at somebody's wedding, her mouth open mid-laugh and his hand on the small of her back. Daniel holding up a fish. Daniel asleep on a couch with a dog on his chest. The dog had died two years ago. I'd gotten the text in a barracks in Germany.

I stopped at the one by the bathroom. It was the three of us, the first Christmas after the wedding. Daniel in the middle with an arm around each of us. I was smiling like a man being held at gunpoint.

I kept walking.

Nora was at the counter in a gray sweatshirt and old leggings, her hair wet, a mug of coffee in both hands. She had her back to the window, and the morning light made her look younger and more tired at the same time. When she saw me, she looked away first.

"There's coffee."

"Thanks."

"I don't have much food. I haven't gone shopping." She gestured at the fridge. "There's eggs, I think. Maybe."

"I'm not hungry."

"Okay."

I poured the coffee and leaned against the counter across from her. The kitchen was small, and the table had two chairs pulled out. One of them had a jacket over the back, a man's canvas jacket, worn at the cuffs. I'd bought him that jacket for his thirtieth birthday. I'd mailed it from Kuwait.

She followed my eyes and went very still.

"I can't move it," she said quietly. "I know it's stupid. I've tried."

"It's not stupid."

"Dana says I need to let go of things."

"Dana isn't you."

"No." She almost smiled. "Dana would have burned the house down by now."

I wanted to touch her. Just her hand, her sleeve, anything. I kept my fingers around the mug.

"Last night," I started.

"Don't." She said it softly this time. "Can I say something first?"

"Okay."

"I'm not going to pretend I don't want you here. I tried that. It didn't work." She set her coffee down and wrapped her arms around herself. "But I can't do this out in the open. Not with your mom, not with Dana, not with anyone who knew him. If it gets out, I lose everything. His family, my friends, the whole town. And you lose them too."

"I know."

"So we need rules."

"Rules."

"Yes." She nodded, relieved to have a plan. "Number one, nobody finds out. Number two, it stays at my house or the lake house, never in public, never at your mom's. Number three..." She stopped and chewed her lip.

"What's number three?"

"I don't know yet. I'll think of one."

"How about this one," I said. "If either of us wants to stop, we say so. Out loud. No sneaking away, no disappearing for three weeks."

Her eyes flicked up to mine. I hadn't meant it as a jab at her, or at me, though we both heard it that way. I'd spent years disappearing.

"Okay," she said. "That's fair."

"And if it starts hurting more than it helps, we stop."

"It already hurts."

"I mean worse than this."

She nodded slowly. Then she crossed the kitchen and stood in front of me, close enough that I could smell her shampoo, and put her palm flat on my chest.

"Your heart's going fast."

"Yeah."

"Mine too." She looked up at me. "Is that normal?"

"I don't know. I've never done this before."

She kissed me, soft and slow, and I put the mug down without looking and pulled her in against me. My hands slid under the hem of her sweatshirt and found warm bare skin at her waist, and she shivered. She made a low sound against my mouth that went straight through me. For a moment there was nothing in the kitchen but that, her fingers in my hair and my mouth on hers, the whole room narrowed down to one breath.

Then her phone buzzed on the counter, and we both jumped.

She grabbed it. I saw the name on the screen, Dana, and Nora's face went white.

"I have to take it. She'll just show up if I don't."

"Go."

She answered with a bright, brittle "Hey!" that didn't sound like her at all. I stepped back. She turned away, one hand pushing through her hair, and I listened to her lie. Yeah, long shift. No, I'm fine. Just tired. Lunch? Sure. Thursday. It was smooth. It was practiced. I stood there and felt something unpleasant settle low in my stomach, because it had taken her about four seconds.

When she hung up, she stood facing the window.

"That's what it's going to be," she said. "Every day. Every call."

"I know."

"I'm good at it. That's what scares me."

I picked up my shirt from the back of a chair, where she must have moved it, and pulled it on. "You want me to go?"

"No." She turned around. "Yes. I don't know. I have to be at work at noon."

"I'll go."

"Caleb."

"It's okay, Nora."

"It's not okay. But thank you." She walked me to the door, and we stood there, awkward, a foot apart. She reached up and straightened my collar, and her hand lingered on my neck. "Sunday's going to be awful."

"Yeah."

"Your mother's going to watch us like a hawk."

"She watches everyone like a hawk."

"Promise me you won't look at me."

"I can't promise that."

"Try."

"I'll try."

She nodded and let go. I stepped out into the cold, and the door closed softly behind me. I stood on the front steps a moment, listening to the quiet inside the house.

My truck was still parked two houses down. I got in and sat there with my hands on the wheel. In the rearview mirror, there was a mark on my neck, just above the collar, small and purple.

I pulled the collar up and started the engine.

My phone buzzed against the console. I glanced at it, expecting my mother.

It was the same unknown number.

“You didn't answer. That's fine. But I think you're going to want to hear what I know about the night Daniel died. Call me. — T”

I read it twice. Then I read it again, and I couldn't swallow.

Because Daniel had died of a heart attack. That was what everyone said. Everyone.

I sat there a long time with the engine running.

I didn't call.