His fingers brushed her knuckles in the hand-off, and it felt intentional. His fingers touched the back of her hand and stayed for one beat longer than they had to, and she didn’t look up for one beat longer than she had to. The dim, golden light from the lamp fell across both of their hands, and there was a small electric stillness on the porch that hadn’t been there a second before.
The cat woke up and stretched lazily. Then she walked across the cushion deliberately, and put one front paw on Reno's good knee. Then the other. She climbed into his lap, kneaded the pocket of his jeans a few times, and lay down across his lap as if she’d been doing it for years.
"Wow," Grace murmured "She doesn’t do that with anybody."
"I'm flattered."
"You should be. I once bled for twenty minutes because I tried to scratch her ears at the wrong time."
"Noted. No ear scratching."
He laid his free hand on her back very lightly, being careful not to startle Marshmallow. To Grace's astonishment, the cat began to purr.
Grace pressed the handkerchief to her eyes and breathed out. When she lowered it, Reno was watching her.
Her stomach did a strange thing where it felt as if it rolled over in her belly. She said a shade nervously, "It's late. And I have to be up early tomorrow. I think I’m going to call it a night. Stay up as late as you’d like.”
He picked up the cat gently and set her back in her usual spot on the sofa. “It’s been a long day and I haven’t gotten much sleep myself for the past week. I think I’ll call it a night, too. He stood up slowly, and she saw the grimace that momentarily distorted his mouth.
She walked into the house with Reno following her. She stopped in front of her bedroom door and turned to face him.
"Thank you, for not telling me how to feel about Liam."
"Anytime, Grace."
She nodded once and went into her room.
The cottage was small enough that she could hear, faintly, the springs of the guest bed when he lay down, and the sound of him talking very softly to the cat who must’ve decided Reno’s presence in her usual nighttime bed wasn’t going to stop her from sleeping there. Grace couldn’t make out Reno’s low murmur to the cat, but it was kind in tone.
She crossed to the dresser.
Liam was twenty-five in the photograph, grinning at the camera. His arm was around her shoulders as they stood on a beach, both of them in cutoffs, sunburned pink, and laughing at something. They had been married six months in that picture. She wouldn’t get pregnant with Lily for almost another year. He wouldn’t be alive in a year.
She picked the frame up and held it the way she had every night for almost five years, and spoke to Liam. Sometimes she did it out loud, but mostly did it in her head these days. She told him about Lily, about the bakery, and about the little stuff that made up her daily life, the cracked floor tile in the kitchen, and what Mrs. Hennessey had ordered that morning by mistake.
Tonight she didn’t know what to say to him. She stood there staring at her husband's face, and for the first time a third person was also in the picture of her life.
I'm not asking you to move out of my heart, she told Liam silently. I want you to know that. There’s a man in my house tonight, and I think he’ll be here for a while. I don’t know yet what that means. But I'm not replacing you. I’ll never replace you.
The picture didn't answer.
You told me not to waste a single day of my life. I’m afraid I’ve wasted a lot of days. I would like, if it's all right with you, to stop wasting them. And I don’t know what that means, either.
The picture didn't answer.
It occurred to her as she carefully set the photo back on the dresser how young she looked in that picture. Death had frozen him in time, and he would never be much older that that laughing young man. But she was no longer the carefree girl in the photo.
For the first time in her life, she felt a distance between herself and Liam, as if he was standing still in the middle of a road and she was in a car driving away from him slowly. Looking at the picture of him tonight felt like looking back at him in the road through her rearview mirror.
He was becoming a memory. And the longer she drove that car forward through life, the smaller he was going to become in the mirror.
Tears rolled silently down her face as she got ready for bed. She turned out the lamp and lay in the dark, listening for the small, soft sounds of a man and a cat settling in for the night across the hall.
I'm trying to keep living, Liam, she said silently in her head. I'm really trying.
12
Reno woke up Tuesday morning with the cat on his good foot. He lay there perfectly still, not disturbing her until he heard Grace stirring. She was moving quietly because Lily was still asleep, but he felt her presence as much as heard it. Weird how he’d become so hyperaware of her. He’d never done that with another person before. It probably meant something, but he had no idea what.
