Chapter 28

Ryan sat at the kitchen table, in her old spot. Her ass had left an impression on the red cushion of the seat. But her ass didn’t fit in it like it used to. Nothing fit her like it used to.

This is not my home anymore.

That man upstairs, he is not my home anymore either.

It’s just me.

The baby rolled, as if putting up its hand to be counted.

You and me, kid, she thought. That’s all we need.

She took another sip of orange juice and waited to hear the squeal of the back steps as Harrison came down.

How strange to feel so cold. So … strangely solid, where for so long she’d just felt liquid and weak, as if her center of gravity was constantly shifting, constantly causing her to fall in and out of her own balance.

She pushed away the juice because Nora always bought the kind with a ton of pulp and she hated drinking through her teeth, and she started to work on her to-do list.

Divorce.

Figure out where to live.

Get back to school.

But where? she wondered. She had no interest in going back to New York or in staying too long in Philly.

Which left the rest of the world.

Or Atlanta.

Georgia Tech and the Food Bank.

Atlanta is a big city, she thought. And she didn’t have to be exiled from what she wanted in fear of bumping into him on the street.

She was tougher than that.

Good lord, what she did upstairs just proved that, didn’t it?

She shook her head, astonished at her own audacity.

The front door opened and then slammed shut and the jangle of keys hit the table in front of the window, and it was the sound of Nora coming home. It had been the same sound since Nora got a set of house keys after Mom died and Daddy started driving the night route.

“Anyone home?” Nora asked.

“In …” She cleared her throat. “In here.”

Nora arrived in the doorway.

Her top was different, a scrub shirt covered in yellow suns and puppies with sunglasses—which while ridiculous on its own, seemed like a terrible sign of a world out of order when worn by Nora. There was something splattered across the front of her blue scrub pants. Mud. Or worse. The morning’s makeup was gone. Her hair, wet or greasy, hung around her face. No sign of the barrette.

“Are you okay?” she asked, knowing there was a good chance her words would get thrown back at her. But there was no way she couldn’t ask.

For a long moment Nora’s face was blank, as if she didn’t understand or hadn’t heard the question, and then she shook, her whole body, just one sharp, short shake. The kind of thing that used to make their mom say “a ghost just walked over my grave.”

And then she smiled. Wan and weak, but a smile all the same.

“Fine. Long day. You alone?” Nora asked.

“Olivia is at school and Daddy’s gone hunting.”

“Hunting,” Nora laughed. “That’ll be interesting.”

Nora hung up her coat on the rack by the back door and poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot.

“It’s cold,” Ryan said, trying to make nice. “You might want to nuke it.”

Nora drank it cold like it was a testament to her orneriness and sat down in her old seat across from her.

“Are you sure you’re okay? You seem …”

Nora glanced sideways at the bathroom door in the corner, her bottom lip caught under her teeth, and Ryan realized Nora was barely holding it together. She pushed aside her coffee cup and reached for her sister’s hands.

At the touch of her fingers Nora gasped. She gasped like she’d been holding her breath all day.

“My whole life is about managing,” she whispered. “Manage doctors, manage patients, manage other people’s grief and anger. And then I come home—” She stopped, shook her head, and yanked back her hands.

“Come home and what?”

“I’ve hated you for a long time, Ryan,” she breathed. “And it wasn’t about Paul, or even the money or hurting Daddy. It was because you left. I spent so long imagining you in New York City, living this glamorous life far away from this place.”

“It wasn’t glamorous,” she said. “It was a studio apartment that smelled like cabbage rolls and a string of jobs I got because of my boobs. And being lonely. Lots and lots of being lonely. Don’t … don’t envy that. You were here. And a part of a family.”

Nora’s lips twisted, the old indication that she was trying not to cry. “I never got a job because of my boobs.”

“It’s because you were hired for your brain. And your boobs are tiny.”

That brought Nora’s head up, her mouth open, the laughter running out before she could stop it.

“I love Daddy and Olivia and I wouldn’t change that … but sometimes it feels like I don’t have anything of my own. I just stepped into Mom’s shoes.”

“Nora, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was such a shitty sister. I should have been here to help.”

“I didn’t win any prizes either. And look at you, Ry.”

She laughed. “Pregnant and alone and back in the Burg?”

“But you won’t stay.” Nora shook her head. “It’s obvious. You’re moving on.”

That wasn’t Nora kicking her out again; it was her sister realizing she’d changed. That Ryan was different, and it was about the biggest compliment she’d ever gotten from her sister.

“Where’s your husband?” Nora asked, blinking her eyes until the sheen of tears went away.

“Upstairs,” she said, wondering what was happening in her sister’s head. What kind of trauma she’d seen to make her so vulnerable. “Getting dressed, and then I imagine he’s leaving.”

“You’re really gonna split?”

“It wasn’t a real marriage.”

“You’re pregnant, Ryan. That makes it pretty real.”

The memory of his face when he’d felt the baby moving against her belly. Those small popcorn pops she still hadn’t gotten used to. He’d been transformed by delight. By excitement.

Leaving would deny him any more of those moments. And deny her the joy of sharing those moments.

“He circles back around me when things fall apart,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of marriage we can make out of that.”

Nora laughed. “Helping each other through the bad times? I’ll take that kind of marriage. Does he treat you bad when things are good?”

She thought of that partnership, the way he held her hand in front of reporters. Asked her opinion in all those meetings.

“No,” she whispered. “I just don’t know if any of the good times were real for him. In fact, I don’t know what was real between us.”

“Well, he’s here now. Nothing more real than this place.” Nora made a low noise in her throat and finished her coffee. “Want me to get rid of him for you?”

Ryan laughed. “No, I think at thirty-two years old, I can fight my own battles.”

“You love him?”

She nodded, because it was true. The truest thing she had in her life besides the baby. “Not that it matters; I don’t think he’s got it in him to love me.”

“Then the asshole doesn’t deserve you.”

“Simple as that?” Ryan whispered through a throat made thin by emotion.

“Simple. As. That.”

Ryan’s smile gave way to laughter, and the laughter opened her heart up to something so powerful and painful she could barely stand it.

She’d been alone and without love for such a long time her body had gone numb, but it came flooding back.

“I think … we, you, me, and Wes, we got real good at hiding all the things that make us lovable,” Nora said. “All the softness and all the … sweetness, because it hurt when Mom died. Because being soft and sweet wouldn’t put food on the table. We hid those things so well we forgot where we put them. But you got plenty in you that’s lovable, Ryan. I’m sorry I, or Paul or anyone, made you feel different.”

Ryan grabbed her sister’s hand again, clung to it across the old table.

The silence between them was broken by the squeal of the back steps as Harrison made his appearance, wearing his suit pants and bourbon-stained white shirt. He was scruffy and bloodshot and coming down the steps of her childhood home, where she’d dreamed vivid dreams about love and Prince Charming, and her solid and cold heart was not impervious.

It wanted him. Her stupid heart. Her stupid body—both wanted him. Thank God her brain knew better and was driving this ship.

I am my own damn Prince Charming.

She’d used him in her bedroom. Used him the way she’d felt used. And she’d tossed him away like he’d tossed her away.

It felt good.

And shitty.

And she didn’t know what to do about any of that.

“Hey,” he said, pausing on the steps when he saw Nora and Ryan.

“Well, hello,” Nora said, putting aside all her strange and sudden vulnerability in exchange for her familiar sarcasm. “You’re not bad-looking when you’re conscious.”

“And clean,” Harrison said, with a shy smile that nearly destroyed her.

“You want some coffee?” Nora asked.

“Badly.”

Ryan sat there like a silent bump on a log, ignoring Nora’s wide-eyed look while Nora went and poured Harrison a cup of coffee and nuked it.

“We’re out of milk. But sugar is over there,” Nora said, pointing to the square Tupperware container on the counter next to the fridge. “I’m afraid the latte machine is busted.”

Harrison ignored the sugar and all of Nora’s jabs and leaned back against the counter, drinking day-old reheated coffee like it was no big deal. Like he did it every day, when she knew for a fact that he was unnaturally devoted to his espresso machine.

“I’m afraid I didn’t get a chance to meet you properly yesterday,” he said.

“Because you were passed out cold on my couch,” Nora said with a slicing smile.

“Exactly. I’m Harrison, Ryan’s husband.”

Nora and Harrison shook hands. “Sorry to hear about the election.”

“Thank you; there will be others.”

That surprised her.

“Hopefully you won’t lose those.”

Harrison smiled. “Hopefully.”

“When are you leaving?” Ryan asked Harrison, cutting through the bullshit small talk.

“I’m not leaving,” he said.

“What?”

“I’m not leaving.” He shrugged.

“Maybe you didn’t understand me upstairs?”

“What happened upstairs?” Nora asked.

“Oh, I understood you,” Harrison said, his eyes on Ryan as if Nora weren’t even in the room. It was like that first night at the bar all over again. Nothing existed but him. “But I don’t think you understand me.” He crossed the room and leaned over the table. “You can use me like that all you want, Ryan. But I’m not leaving.”

The back door was thrown open so hard it bounced off one of the kitchen chairs, and Ryan jumped, nearly bonking heads with Harrison.

Daddy poked his head in the door, his hair wild, his grin even wilder. “Girls! We need all hands on deck!”

“Did you actually shoot something?” Ryan asked, getting to her feet and rushing with her sister to the back door.

“Bucky hit a big white-tail with his truck!” Dad lit up like he used to, that smile in the corners of his mouth. “Come on, clean up the back table. It’ll be just like the old days.”

Just like them, but somehow, painfully not.

Why didn’t you ever call me? she wondered. Why didn’t you ever reach out? I was your daughter as much as Nora and you just let me be gone for six years.

Dad vanished from the doorway and she turned to find Harrison watching her, reading her expression like he knew what she was thinking. The sweetness of being back home, tipping just a little toward bitterness.

And he probably did know what she was thinking. That was maybe the consolation prize of their marriage. Instead of happiness, they had this awkward knowledge of each other. This terrible understanding that couldn’t ever be turned into something warm. Something useful.

It just was.

The backyard was bare in the November afternoon. Their patio furniture was shoved in the corner, the trash cans had tipped over in the night, and raccoons had thrown the garbage around like it was a party. The chain-link fence in the back was rusted and falling down in places, covered in junk that had gotten stuck against it in the wind.

There was nothing lush or pampered or cared for about this lawn.

And her dad and some of his old army buddies were going to bring in some roadkill and butcher it on the patio table.

“Harrison!” she yelled. “We need you.”

“You trying to drive him away?” Nora muttered under her breath as she walked by, going out to the yard to help.

Showing him the real me, she thought.

“What’s happening?” Harrison asked, standing in the doorway with her. His shoulder brushing against hers.

“Dad’s going to butcher a deer they killed on the highway. He needs your help.”

To Harrison’s credit he only nodded, finished his terrible coffee, and handed her the cup. His hand caught hers for a moment, his fingers tracing the rings on her finger. The engagement and wedding rings he put there … what? Two months ago.

God, how quickly things could change.

“You’re still wearing them,” he said.

“I forgot to take them off.” She started to pull them off her finger, but it was difficult with this water weight that was beginning to make her fingers and feet swell.

“Leave them,” he said, taking her hand and kissing her fingers.

“Harrison—”

“I’m winning you back, Ryan,” he said with that shy smile. It was fascinating, that smile, an indicator of some side of him she’d never seen. “But first I gotta go butcher a deer.”

He said it like he knew what he was doing and then was gone, out to the old garage in his dress shirt, walking past the garbage and the weeds as if they just weren’t there.

When Harrison said for better or for worse in the Georgia Governor’s Mansion, he’d never once expected this.

Holding down the hind leg of the dead deer while his father-in-law used a hacksaw to cut the deer right down the middle of its belly. All in an attempt to win back the affection of his wife.

Harrison turned his head and gagged into his shoulder.

“You all right there?” Robert asked, still hacking his way through skin and muscle.

“Just fine,” Harrison managed to get out.

It was freezing out in the yard and he had no coat, and none of the Dwarfs or his father-in-law seemed interested in loaning him one. And he got it—it was both a test and a punishment. He’d belonged to a fraternity for a while; he knew how this worked.

Harrison wasn’t entirely sure how Robert was going to come at him or how much leeway he was going to give the father who had shunned Ryan for the last six years when it came to the hard time the man wanted to give the new son-in-law.

“How much meat you think we’re going to get off this thing?” Robert asked the guy named Bucky, who as the driver of the weapon that had felled this creature sat in a lawn chair drinking beer while the rest of them worked.

“Seventy pounds, if you’re careful,” Bucky said, draining his third bottle.

“Call some of the folks down at the hall,” Robert said over his shoulder to another one of the men. “See if we can’t put some of this meat in the freezers of families who need some help this winter.”

“That’s good of you,” Harrison said past the hideous burn of bile in his throat.

“We take care of our own around here,” Robert said.

But you didn’t, he thought, thinking of Ryan’s face as she watched her father in the kitchen. You left her in the cold.

“Ryan told me about that VetAid thing you got going,” Robert said.

“Families of vets need help, too.”

“That’s good of you.”

Harrison smiled. This was as close as they were going to get to hugging it out.

“So Robert?” one of the other hunters on the far side of the table said. “You never told us Ryan got married.”

“Again!” another guy yelled.

“You weren’t invited to the wedding?” asked Bucky.

“No, I wasn’t,” Robert said, sawing with a little extra force. Harrison moved his fingers farther out of the way.

“That’s what happens when you don’t talk to your daughter for six years. You miss out on some stuff,” Harrison said.

“Oh ho!” Bucky cried. “He’s got you there.”

The back door opened and Ryan stood in the yellow square of light, a sweater wrapped around her body. “Anybody need anything out here?” she asked.

“Your husband needs a barf bag,” Robert said, watching him from the corner of his eye.

Ryan winced.

“I’m fine,” he lied.

“I could use another beer,” Bucky yelled, and Ryan went back inside.

For a second, the only sound in the backyard was the hideous scrape of saw through bone.

“You want to fill me in on what’s going on between you and my daughter?”

“If you wanted to know anything about her life in the last six years, I imagine you could have picked up the phone.”

Robert stopped butchering and stood, facing Harrison carrying a saw with blood dropping off its serrated edges, but Harrison wasn’t scared. He was cold, hung over, starving, nauseated, and ready to fight on behalf of a woman who hadn’t seen anyone fight for her in a long time.

“You got something to say, I figure you should just say it,” Robert demanded.

The back door opened and Ryan came out carrying beers, but she stopped on the top step as if sensing the dangerous mood in the backyard.

“For a guy who welcomed her home with open arms, you could have welcomed her home a lot sooner,” Harrison said.

“She came running here because she had nowhere else to go, which makes me think you must have made sure she didn’t feel too welcome with you,” Robert said.

“You’re right,” he agreed. “I did. I lost everything a few days ago. Everything I thought I wanted. The election, my career, my future. But I wanted to protect Ryan from how terrible my world can be. How ugly. How cold. How unforgiving. So I sent her away. And that’s the thing about losing everything,” he said, catching her eye, telling her and her father at the same time. “It makes you realize what you really want.”

“And you want my daughter?”

He nodded, and the distance between him and Ryan vanished. The men, the deer—it all fell away, and the world was revealed in stark lines. Belief or doubt. That was all that mattered.

“You think I don’t see you?” he asked her, ignoring his father-in-law and his friends. “You think I don’t understand how every time you’ve hit rock bottom people shove you away, leave you alone?”

He could hear her breathing. Over the wind. Over the pounding of his heart, he could hear her breath.

“I’m not leaving,” he said. “You can do whatever you want to me. I’m here.”

“What if I leave?”

“Then I’ll follow you.”

“You think it’s that easy?”

“Easy?” He laughed. He laughed so hard it hurt, and then he held out his arms, looking down at the dead deer on the table, her father carrying a gory hacksaw. “What part of this looks easy to you?”

Ryan handed Bucky the beer and headed back inside, the swish of her skirt like a red cape to his inner bull.

“I missed her every day for six years, almost picked up the phone a million times,” Robert said, looking suddenly older in the twilight. Suddenly weighed down by a life that had not been easy.

“Why didn’t you?” Harrison asked.

“Too proud?” Robert shrugged. “Trying to keep the peace with Nora? I don’t even know anymore. But I’d take it back. Every minute, I’d take it back.”

“You need to tell her that.”

Robert nodded and straightened his glasses, but instead of going in there and telling his daughter he loved her, he bent back over the deer.

“This is your chance,” Harrison told Robert, who only grinned and shook his head.

“I think it’s yours, son.”

Harrison stepped back. This wasn’t how he was going to prove his love.

He turned on the hose and held his hands under the ice-cold water and cleaned off the blood and the regret. He splashed the water over his head and face, and the shock of it cleared his head.

He loved her and she needed to know that.