Secret Vows

Chapter 6: Nobody Put a Hand On It

The door shut behind Trey, and for a minute the room held still.

It hadn't caught. It hung a quarter inch off the latch with a stripe of porch light standing in the gap, and it stayed that way.

The check lay on the coffee table where he'd left it, squared to the edge. Fifty thousand dollars, made out to both of them, and nobody had put a hand on it.

Cody was on the couch with his elbows on his knees and his hands hanging between them, boots flat on the carpet. He'd come in off the road with the day still on him and hadn't been out of his clothes since.

Renee moved first.

She went out through the dining room into the kitchen and came back with the broom, the dustpan, and a roll of paper towels under her arm, and got down on the floor beside the couch, and started picking the glass out of the carpet with her fingers.

The lamp on the coffee table was the only light on in the room. It threw a yellow pool across the table and the floor around it, and both places where the glass had gone were inside that pool — the one at the front of the couch where the first glass had come down, and the one at the corner of the table where the second one had hit.

Dale stood at the end of the table looking down at the check.

Nobody helped her. She didn't ask.

The broom was no good on the small pieces. They stood up out of the shag and the dustpan slid right over them, so she picked. She got the big ones first, one and two and three, and dropped them in the pan, and then went at the wet place with the paper towels, pressing down with the heel of her hand and watching the tea come up brown into the paper. The ice had melted down into the carpet by then, and that patch was darker than anywhere else in the room. Then she lay down on her side and put her cheek on the floor and reached back under the couch for the pieces that had slid that far, and came out with two more. She shoved the coffee table an inch over to get the last of it and shoved it back. She balled the wet towels up and left them on the floor by the pan.

Cody watched her hands and not her face.

The kitchen still smelled like supper. Down at the far end of the dining table, past the salt, the two glasses Trey had moved out of his father's reach were still standing.

Bonnie came back down the hall and stood in the kitchen doorway with her arms crossed.

"I'll run to the store in the morning," she said, to the room. "There's nothing in the house for breakfast."

Then she said, "Cody. You want me to fix you something? There's still—"

"I'm good."

She waited a second to see if there was any more of an answer than that, and there wasn't. She went back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator and stood there with the door open a while before she shut it.

Dale put one hand down on the coffee table and leaned on it. His jaw worked twice. Then he said, "Somebody turn that lamp off before they come to bed," and went down the hall, and the last door on the left shut behind him.

Nobody went after him.

Emmy's door opened at the back of the hall.

She came out in her nightshirt, barefoot, and came down as far as the light reached, and stopped with her hand on the door frame and looked at the paper on the coffee table. Her voice came out loud in a room that had been quiet.

"Is that ours?"

"Not ours," Cody said. "You want some water?"

She thought about it. Then she nodded.

"Don't come in here, baby." Renee was still down on her knees by the couch. "There's glass."

Bonnie came back out of the kitchen and took her hand and walked her down the hall. The faucet ran, a cabinet shut, the back room door opened and closed. After that it was the refrigerator and the clock.

Renee got up off the floor. She carried the dustpan into the kitchen and emptied it in the trash and put the broom back in the corner, and ran the faucet and stood at the sink washing her hands for longer than it took to wash her hands.

Then she came back through the dining room and stopped at the end of the table and looked at the check.

She didn't look at him. He didn't look at her.

Then she went down the hall to their room and shut the door.

Bonnie came through and washed the glasses at the sink, two and then the third one, and set them back in the cupboard with the rest, and wiped down the counter, and went down the hall herself. The last door on the left opened and shut again.

After that there was nobody in the front of the house but Cody.

He'd been on this couch since Trey put a hand on his arm and brought him out of the bedroom, and he hadn't stood up since. He wanted a shower. He'd wanted one for hours, since the last stretch of the drive, since before he pulled in. He sat.

He could smell the day on himself. Diesel, and cold air, and coffee out of a cup that had been sitting in the same holder since before daylight. His hair had dried flat on the side where the seat had pressed it. He'd left the house before daylight with a cup in his hand and come back after dark, and in between there was the seat and the mirrors and the road.

He turned his hands over and looked at them. Black in the creases of his knuckles, black under the edges of the nails, cracked at the first joints. Soap and hot water would take it off. He hadn't got that far.

She could say something. He wasn't going to be the one.

The refrigerator ran. Somewhere in the back of the house a bed frame gave one knock and settled. The clock over the kitchen door said 10:06.

He sat another eight minutes, and then he got up.

He went to the front door first and pulled it all the way shut and threw the bolt, and the stripe of porch light went out of the room. Then he turned the lamp off. The check was still on the table.

The hall was dark the whole way down. In the bathroom at the end of it he shut the door and turned the water on as hot as it ran and sat down on the edge of the tub with his socks still on, and let it run.