Chapter 4-Professional distance

Anita pov

His footsteps stopped just inside the kitchen doorway.

I had turned the phone over by then. Both hands on the counter. Face arranged into something that had no name for what was behind it.

I did not turn around.

Donald’s silences were never empty. They were always full of something he had already decided and was waiting for you to catch up to.

He came to the counter. Opened the cabinet. Took out a glass. Filled it from the tap, drank half standing there, set it down.

“Did you call the Aldermans about Friday?”

“Not yet.”

“Before the weekend.” Easy. Already turning back toward the hall.

He walked out.

I stood there until his study door closed.

Then I picked up the phone.

Two messages still on the screen.

The old version knew exactly what she wanted.

Forget that.

I read them both. Put the phone face down.

I did not reply that night. Or the next morning.

I had lunch with Priya.

She had known me since before Donald. Before the ring and the house and the hedges trimmed perfectly straight. She never pushed. She just looked at you and waited, and somehow that was worse.

We met at the place on Calloway Street with the good bread. She was already there, already watching the door.

“You look terrible,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“I mean it.”

“I know you mean it.”

I pulled off my coat. Stood a second too long before I remembered how chairs worked.

“Anita.”

“The tiles,” I said, sitting. “Tell me about the contractor.”

She looked at me a long moment. Then she let me keep not saying it.

“He used the wrong grout. On the entire backsplash.”

I nodded. Tore a piece of bread.

She talked and I made the right sounds, and somewhere in the middle of it I noticed my left hand pressing flat on the table. Too hard. Too still. I moved it to my lap before she saw.

“You’re not here,” Priya said.

“I’m here.”

“You’re physically here. The rest of you is somewhere I haven’t been invited.”

“I’m fine, Priya.”

She looked back at me. Not angry. Just tired of the answer.

“Of course you are,” she said, and went back to her food.

That was worse than if she had pushed. She knew it was.

We finished. I paid.

Outside she hugged me and held on a second longer than usual, and I let her.

Then I walked to my car and got in and the descent came up to meet me before I had the key in the ignition.

Cold leather. Grey November light that did not care about anything.

I was not ready to go back to the straight hedges and the clean kitchen and the study where Donald laughed for someone who was not me, and the not-being-ready turned, sitting there in the cold car, into something with pressure behind it.

I started the engine anyway.

Made it two blocks.

The light went red.

Something in my chest opened. Not loudly. Not all at once. Just a pressure that had been sitting there a long time finally moving, and I put both hands over my face and sat at a red light on a Tuesday in November and cried.

Someone behind me honked.

The light had changed.

I put the car in gear.

By the time I turned onto our street my face was exactly as it always was.

Dinner was quiet.

Donald talked about Westfield and I cleared the plates and moved through the rest of the evening the automatic way I had learned to move through evenings in that house. One thing then the next. Not feeling any of it.

I went to bed first.

Lay in the dark and listened to the house settle.

His voice low from the study.

Then silence.

Then his footsteps on the stairs.

Measured. Unhurried.

He came in. Changed in the dark. Got into bed. His lamp did not come on.

Then he turned toward me, and his hand came to my waist, light, careful, and my body went still.

Not a decision. Not something I chose.

My breathing went flat. My muscles locked. My mind went somewhere else entirely and I lay there counting, because counting was the only thing available.

One.

Two.

Three.

He felt it.

I know he felt it, because his hand stopped. Not quickly. Slowly. Like he was giving us both a way to pretend it had not happened.

He turned away.

The silence that followed was different from every other silence in that house.

It had weight.

It had shape.

Neither of us named it.

I lay in the dark and stared at the ceiling and waited for morning.

My phone lit up on the nightstand.

I reached for it.

One message.

A number I did not recognise.

No words.

Just a photograph.