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“Thanks,” she says. “You want a crouton in exchange?”I can’t sleep.
I don’t know why. Between the skiing, the sex, and the wine, I should have been out before my head hit the pillow, but instead every time I finally doze off, I wake up again half an hour later with the strange, unsettling feeling that I’ve left something undone, some problem unsolved.
I lie awake, tick through all the possibilities. There aren’t many, because I’m on vacation, and nothing needs my attention in the middle of the night in West Virginia.
I fall back asleep, barely. I wake up in a huge, comfortable bed, Delilah warm and naked next to me. I still feel like there’s something moving just underneath my skin.
Finally, around four in the morning, I give up. I get out of bed, pull on a shirt, a sweater, my plaid pajama pants. I walk into the living room, rub my eyes, wish I’d brought slippers with me, pad to the fireplace and turn it up.
I’m standing exactly where Nolan was in the photo I found, the one hidden in the closet underneath towels and sheet and her wedding album. I look down at my feet. I walk quietly to the bedroom door, close it silently.
The box is exactly where I left it, of course, under a stack of sheets and towels, all bleached perfectly white and folded neatly. I take them out, put them on the floor.
The cardboard sags in my hands, and for a moment I think it’s going to give way and send everything crashing to the floor, waking Delilah up. I brace it with a hand underneath. Look at the bedroom door again.
I know better than to think I’m acting right as I place the box gently on the dining table, push the flaps aside. I know that the clean slate and starting over were my idea. I know she’s long-divorced and the past isn’t supposed to exist, let alone matter, but none of that stops me.
The album is still on top. Hardbound, leather cover, glossy pages inside. I flip through it and try not to linger on any one page: the kiss, the first dance, the posed photo under a lit archway. Her family is there. Her sisters are teenagers; Vera looks remarkably the same.
The photos I found before. The two of them, standing right there, looking happy. Her hair shorter, her face rounder, his arms circling her middle like he’s caught her and is pulling her back.
There’s more. A birthday card, the greeting that came with flowers. A few more photos, one with them on skis. A cutesy, fake-rustic sign that says “Mr. and Mrs. Prescott.” Tchotchkes. Their wedding guestbook.
And then, at the bottom: a small jewelry box that rattles when I pick it up. I’m pretty sure I know what I’m going to find, but when I pop it open, I’m still surprised.
There are two rings. One’s expected, the glittering monster I saw on her finger at the Whiskey Barrel. The other I’ve never seen before: a matching wedding band, tiny diamonds embedded in delicate gold.
I don’t think about the fact that tens of thousands of dollars of jewelry are sitting in a cardboard box in a closet. I don’t even wonder what they’re doing here.
I just try to imagine them on her finger, and I can’t.
I’m still staring at them when the bedroom door opens and she leans out, naked except panties, blinking.
“Hey,” Delilah says, voice foggy. “You okay?”
“I couldn’t sleep,” I tell her, folding my fingers around the rings as if I can hide what I’m doing.
“Yeah, that bed is a little weird,” she says. Yawns. Stretches. The Kraken and the vines move like they’re alive. “It just takes a little…”
She trails off, arms crossed over her chest, leaning in the door frame.
“What are you doing?” Delilah asks, suddenly sounding more awake.
I tighten my hand, the diamond digging into my palm.
“I was looking for a towel.”
She walks over. Stands at the table, her hair coming loose from a braid over her shoulder. Looks at the cards and the book and the photos and the sign. Grabs the box, peeks inside.
Finally, she looks over at me, her cheeks going pink and her expression unreadable.
“Is this why we fucked?” she asks, voice low as the calm before the storm.
She knows me. Isn’t that what I told her the night I brought scones? She knows me, and it’s going to be my undoing.
“No.”
Her cheeks flush even redder.
“It wasn’t because you found this while I was out skiing and you wanted to mark your territory?” she asks. “And now you’re going through my shit at four thirty in the morning, making sure you marked everything there was to mark?”
“We fucked in the bathroom because that’s what we —”
“After we specifically talked about it in the car yesterday? After not fucking was your idea in the first place, because fucking was all we did and you wanted to try something new?”
