Steve moved in at his discretion.
He showed up the third week, walked the perimeter of the kitchen, jumped onto the top of the refrigerator, and lay down. He stayed three days. He went back to the clinic. He came back the following Tuesday. Astrid told me, after the third trip, that this was the arrangement and that I was not going to be consulted on it. I told her I'd accepted my role.
Caldwell called every client he'd had for thirty years and told them the practice on Elm was closing, that he was retiring, and that he wanted them to bring their charts across town. Thecharts came. The waiting room filled. Astrid hired a second tech in March.
I went back to Hartsdale Fire the week after I'd come home.
Lou met me in the bay on the morning of my first shift back. He didn't say anything about Queens. He handed me my gear out of the locker and told me Halsey had eggs on.
The breath in my chest had stayed down.
It stayed down through the winter, through Astrid moving in, through Steve on the refrigerator, the recipe cards in the drawer, and the brass lamp coming back to the side table. The breath had a place now. The place was the kitchen, the backyard, the rose at the fence, and the woman who slept beside me on the side toward the door, because she'd taken it the first week and hadn't given it back.
The wedding planning took three months, most of which was the war between Audrey and Duke.
Whether the cake was going to have buttercream or fondant?—
"Buttercream," said Audrey.
"Fondant," said Duke.
"Buttercream," said Astrid.
"The answer is buttercream," said Easton. "Duke, stop."
Whether Audrey's dress was going to be in the sage or the dusty rose?—
"Sage," said Audrey.
"I have an opinion," said Duke.
"Nobody asked you."
Whether Duke's mother's spaniel was going to be in the wedding?—
"Moose is doing the rings," Astrid said. "The spaniel cannot be trusted. The answer is no."
They'd been in my kitchen for three months, pretending to hate each other.
I watched Duke pull a chair out for her at the table the second week of February and pretend he'd been pulling it out for himself. I watched Audrey hand him the wine bottle in March without looking up. I watched her steal a fry off his plate at the diner the week before the wedding, and he didn't say anything about it, which meant he'd been letting her steal fries for some time.
Astrid clocked all of it.
She didn't say anything either.
Astrid's parents flew up the day before the wedding.
Her father cried on the phone the night before that. Astrid held the phone six inches from her ear and looked at me across the kitchen. She let him cry, and her mother took the phone at some point and told him in a brisk voice to pull himself together because he was going to scare the dog.
We didn't get any sleep.
I lay awake beside her on the side toward the door, and she lay awake beside me with her hand on my chest, and at four in the morning, she said, into the dark, "Are you nervous?"
"I'm not nervous."
"Liar."
"I'm a little nervous."
