All Chapters of When Winter Blooms: Chapter 21 - Chapter 30

48 Chapters

The Whole Way Home

Derek's first face happened before we'd even gotten our coats off.I saw it from across the lobby, and then he composed himself and came toward us with the expression of a man who has decided to be extremely well-behaved and is finding it a significant effort. He kissed me on the cheek like we'd known each other for years, and shook Ethan's hand, and said absolutely nothing of substance for a full thirty seconds, which I understood to be Derek Calloway exercising genuine restraint."You look wonderful," he said to me."Thank you.""The dress is….""Derek," Ethan said."I was going to say lovely.""You were going to say something else."Derek smiled. "Shall we go in?"The event was exactly what I'd expected and nothing I was fully prepared for, a hotel ballroom made to look effortless, and several hundred people in black tie doing the thing where everyone is performing ease at each other. Enormous floral arrangements, a string quartet in the corner playing something I half-recognised.

The Second Mug

The morning after the gala, Ethan made coffee.He always made his own coffee, first thing, before anyone else was up, the machine running while the apartment was still dark and quiet. What was unusual was that when I came into the kitchen at seven he was still there, not on his way out, he was just there leaning against the counter in his work clothes with his mug, looking at nothing in particular, in no apparent hurry to be anywhere.He looked up when I came in."Morning," he said."Morning." I went to the coffee machine, there was already a second mug beside it. I looked at it for a second, then I filled it.We stood on opposite sides of the kitchen and drank our coffee and Lily was still asleep down the hall. He didn't move toward the door, he just stood there with his mug and occasionally looked at the window and occasionally looked at me and I did not examine any of this too closely. "Did you sleep?" he asked."Eventually." I looked at my mug. "You?""Eventually," he said.Lily

For A Minute

He started working from home more.A Tuesday where he appeared at the kitchen island with his laptop at nine and stayed until three, a Thursday where he took calls from the living room instead of going in to the office, a Friday that he explained to no one, because no one had asked, because that was somehow the understanding we'd arrived at, that certain things didn't require accounting for anymore.Lily thought it was wonderful, Lily treated his presence like a gift she'd been given and kept rediscovering throughout the day, appearing at his elbow with things to show him, questions about things that had occurred to her, updates on Gerald's various positions on household matters. He absorbed all of it without complaint and occasionally, when she'd moved on, would look up from his laptop with the expression of someone who has been interrupted six times in an hour and does not mind as much as he thought he would.He caught me watching him have that expression once.He looked back at his

Not In It Alone

He came home at 10:45.Lily had been asleep since eight, I'd eaten alone, tidied the kitchen, done the small evening things, and then sat on the sofa with my book and the low lamp.I was waiting.His bag set down, heavier than usual.He didn't come to the kitchen, neither to the living room, he went straight past both and the light under his study door didn't come on, which meant he hadn't gone to work either.I put my book down.He was in the living room, he hadn't turned anything on, he was in the chair by the window, the dark one, the city doing its nighttime glittering behind him, and he was just sitting there. Jacket still on, Just sitting in the dark looking at nothing I could identify.I stood in the doorway for a moment.He knew I was there, he'd looked up when I appeared, briefly, and then looked back at the window, not sending me away, neither inviting me in. Leaving it to me.I came in, sat on the sofa nearest to his chair, close enough that he wasn't alone, far enough that

Both Of You

Lily had been preparing for the spring show for two weeks.This preparation involved daily rehearsals in the living room, a rotating audience of Gerald, the sunflower magnet, and whoever happened to be in the kitchen at the time, and a level of artistic seriousness that I found both admirable and slightly alarming. She was singing a song, something about rain and growing things, gentle and slow. She sang it with her eyes closed and her hands clasped in front of her and the expression of someone who understood that this mattered.Gerald had been briefed he was coming."You're both coming," Lily said on the morning of, at breakfast, in the tone of someone confirming logistics."We're both coming," Ethan said.She looked at me. "Maya too.""Maya too," I said.She nodded with the satisfaction of someone whose arrangements are in order. She ate her toast, she did not perform anxiety or excitement, she was simply ready.I thought about being four years old and that sure, I thought about wh

I Know

Lily was asleep before we reached the end of the block.The biscuits, the performance high, the sustained effort of being wonderful in public, it had all caught up with her at once. She'd climbed into the car with Gerald, arranged herself against my side, and was unconscious within four minutes.Gerald was in her arms, the felt flower headband was slightly askew. She was, objectively, the best thing I had ever seen.I looked at her for a moment, then I looked up and found Ethan already watching me look at her, which had been happening more and more, him watching me watch Lily, me watching him watch Lily, the two of us quietly observing each other's love for the same small person and not saying anything about it.He looked back at the window.I looked back at Lily.The car moved through Saturday afternoon traffic, slower than at night, the city going about its weekend business, people on sidewalks, a farmers market on one corner."She knew every word," he said quietly after a while, so

Worth It

The book appeared on my nightstand on Sunday morning.I found it when I woke up, like it had always been there, except it hadn't been there when I went to sleep, not a new novel, the spine was creased, the cover slightly worn at the corners, the particular soft quality of a book that has been read more than once and kept somewhere it was valued. There was no note, no explanation, just the book.I picked it up.I knew his handwriting by now, had seen it on the school shortlist notes, on the post-its he left on the kitchen counter when he was dealing with something that needed dealing with, on the legal pad he kept in his study that I'd caught a glimpse of once through the open door. So I knew it immediately, inside the front cover, just a few words in the careful, slightly compressed hand:This one cost something, thought you might want it.I sat on the edge of my bed for a long time.He was in the kitchen when I came out. Sunday morning, coffee made, Lily still asleep, the apartment d

The Fork

The dinner was not a date.It was a work dinner, a colleague of Ethan's, a man named Forsythe, was in from London and had suggested dinner and Ethan had, without particular explanation, without asking my permission, said he'd bring Maya.He'd told me this on Tuesday. "Dinner Thursday, Forsythe's in town, Come."Not a question, not quite an order. "As your….?" I'd started."As yourself," he'd said flatly. I'd worn the green dress, Priya would have had opinions about the green one being a wedding dress but Priya was not here and the green dress was right and I knew it.Forsythe was exactly what his name suggested, sixty, well-fed on expense accounts, the kind of man who had learned early that confidence and volume could substitute for most other qualities in a room, he was not unkind. He was the particular variety of person who simply did not notice certain things or chose not to, because noticing them would require him to adjust his map of the world and his map was very settled.He n

Me Too

Lily had nightmares sometimes.She was a solid, confident sleeper, the kind of child who went down easily and stayed down, who woke in the mornings ready rather than reluctant. But occasionally something got through, some fragment of the day assembled itself into something frightening in the dark, and she'd wake up crying with the particular distress of a child who cannot immediately locate the line between the dream and the room.I heard her at 2:00 in the morning, I was up and moving before I was fully awake, the parent reflex I had developed without noticing. I got to her room quickly, she was sitting up in bed, crying properly, Gerald clutched against her chest, and when I came in she reached for me and I sat on the bed and she climbed into my lap and we stayed like that while the nightmare dissolved back into nothing, slowly, then completely, replaced by the ordinary dark of her room and my voice and the small rituals of being soothed."It was a bad dream," she told me."I know,

Okay

He was making eggs when I came out.He was at my side of the stove, the side I occupied every morning while he occupied the counter, with a pan and eggs and the focused expression of someone doing something unfamiliar with full commitment.I stopped in the doorway.He heard me but didn't turn around. "Sit down," he said. I sat down.Lily was still asleep, she always slept later after a bad night, the body catching up on what the nightmare had taken, the apartment was quiet, the Monday morning version. I watched him make eggs.He was not a confident cook, I had established this over four months of watching him navigate the kitchen with the careful purposefulness of someone who knew the theory but had not logged the hours. He found things on the second or third try, he read labels, he once spent four minutes looking for the colander before I pointed at the cabinet directly above his head without saying anything.But he knew how to make scrambled eggs, low heat, the slow way, not the

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