CHAPTER 4: What She Chooses

She did not sleep.

She sat in the east guest room on the edge of a bed she did not trust, still in the blue dress, with the shower running to cover the sound of her crying. She had cried in the car, and again when she first washed her face, and she was beginning to understand that grief did not come in one wave. It came in tides, and each one found a different thing to take. The vows she had rewritten. The way she had practiced signing Vivian Marsh on the back of an envelope, feeling foolish and pleased.

When the water finally cooled she dried her face, put on the robe someone had left, and went to find him.

He was in the library with a map unrolled across the table and a pencil behind his ear. He looked up when she came in and put the pencil down at once.

"You should be resting."

"I tried. Every time I close my eyes I hear his voice." She stood in the doorway with her arms folded.

"I've never been this angry. I don't know what to do with it."

"Come in."

She went in. He didn't touch her. He moved the map aside and set a glass of water in front of her, and she drank it because it was something to do with her hands.

"Why are you his godfather?"

She asked.

"You said you've never liked him."

"His father asked at a time when I owed Gerald a favor."

Vincent leaned on the edge of the table.

"I stood in a church, held a baby I didn't care about, and promised to guide him. I gave him a watch when he was fifteen. After that I saw him only when he wanted something."

"A loan."

"Usually."

His mouth hardened.

"I'm not proud of that. I never asked what kind of man he was becoming, because it was easier not to know."

She studied him. It was an odd sort of confession from a man who did not seem to make them.

"That isn't your fault."

"Some of it is."

He said it plainly, and did not ask her to disagree.

"He called me boring,"

She said.

"I heard."

"You heard? How?"

"One of the men at the church was mine. He was at the back, watching the doors."

His voice was level.

"I'm sorry. It's a hard thing to hear."

She turned the glass slowly.

"I waited three years. We said we'd wait until the wedding, and I thought that meant he respected me. It turns out he was waiting for a buyer."

She took a breath.

"I'm twenty-four. I've never been with anyone. I kept it for a man who deserved it, and I was a fool."

"You weren't a fool."

He said it simply.

"He's the one who failed."

The room was quiet. A clock ticked somewhere behind the books.

"I'm not going to pretend I'm unaffected by you,"

Vincent said.

"Since you were on the stairs I've been trying not to be. But you're in shock, Vivian. You were hurt less than twelve hours ago. I won't take advantage of that."

She looked at him, startled. She had expected a different kind of man. She had expected the one who would say, stay and make it sound like a command.

"I need you to listen,"

She said slowly.

"I know I'm hurt. I know I'm angry, and I know none of this is how I imagined it. But I'm tired of other people deciding what I can handle. I'm not asking you to fix anything. I'm asking whether you want me."

"I do."

"Then I want to choose something that's mine."

Her voice shook, but she kept going.

"Not out of revenge. Not because I'm grateful. I want to know what it feels like when someone asks."

He crossed the room and stopped an arm's length away. His eyes were very dark.

“Do you know what you’re asking for”.

She answered.

“Yes, I know exactly what I want”.

"Then I'll ask,"

He said.

"May I?"

"Yes."

"Say it again if you change your mind. At any time, for any reason."

His hand lifted and waited in the air between them.

"You don't owe me an explanation."

His palm was rough and warm, and it smelled faintly of cedar and smoke. She had expected his hands to feel like weapons. Instead, they felt careful, like the hands of a man who knew exactly how much force he carried and was spending none of it on her.

"I'm still afraid,"

She admitted.

"Good. Stay afraid of me until you've decided I haven't earned it."

He said it without a trace of irony.

"Fear is information. Use it."

She took the hand and set it against her cheek.

Halfway through, a wave of panic went through her, sudden and cold, with no clear cause. She said,

"Wait."

He stopped at once. He lifted away from her, and his hands went flat on the blanket beside her where she could see them.

"Do you want to stop?"

"No."

Her breath was uneven.

"I don't know. I need a minute."

"Take as long as you like."

He gave her a minute, and then ten, and never once sighed or looked at the clock. He only lay beside her with one hand open on the sheet, palm up, where she could take it or leave it. When she was ready, she took it.

Afterward, what she remembered was not any single moment but the way he went slowly, and the way he asked. He asked whether she was all right, whether she wanted to stop, whether he should wait. Each time she said no, and each time he waited anyway until she told him she was sure. The fire in the grate burned down to embers. His voice was low and unsteady in the dark, saying her name, and for the first time in months she was not afraid of anything in the room.

The rest belonged to the two of them.

Later she lay awake with her head on his shoulder and watched the last of the firelight move across the ink on his arm. It was a pattern of birds, she saw, dozens of them, rising from the wrist upward.

"What do they mean?"

she asked.

"People I lost."

He said it without inflection.

"One bird for each."

She counted twenty-three before she stopped.

"Vincent."

"Yes."

"Tomorrow I'm going to wake up and be embarrassed."

"That's allowed."

"And you're going to want something from me."

His hand stilled in her hair.

"Yes,"

he said after a moment.

"I am."

She waited, but he didn't say what, and she let the silence stand. Her heart was beating hard. She had given something tonight that could not be taken back, to a man whose name was never spoken aloud.

She told herself it had been her choice. It was. She would hold on to that.

Beside her, Vincent was not asleep. She could tell by the careful stillness of his breathing. He lay looking at the ceiling the way she had seen him look at the stairwell, as if he were counting something that did not add up.

She thought of Laila, of that unreadable flicker across her face in the church office. You don't know what I was promised. She had no idea why that sentence would not leave her alone.

Somewhere beyond the walls of the villa, a car passed slowly on the road, and neither of them said anything until it was gone.