“So Greg and I started counseling,” Claire said.
Nina and Harper both looked at her. Claire was staring at the path ahead, one hand on the reins and the other resting on her thigh. She sat differently now, taller, less folded up, like a woman who remembered she was allowed to take up space in the world.
“How is it?” Nina asked.
“Hard, really hard. He cries. I guess I didn’t expect that. He sits in the therapist’s office and cries. Turns out Greg has been carrying things too. Things I didn’t know about because I was so busy being invisible. I forgot that he might be feeling invisible too.”
Somewhere, a woodpecker was methodically trying to dismantle a tree. The horses continued walking, and the moss continued swaying.
“He told the therapist about the gift card,” Claire said, “about how he didn’t even choose a store. And then he said, ‘I didn’t know what she wanted. I haven’t known what she wanted in years. And I was afraid to ask because I was afraid the answer would be something I couldn’t give her.’”
Nina let that settle in for a moment. It was more complicated than she had expected the answer to be. She had been ready to dislike Greg for most of this year. She’d been quietly building her case against him in her head. But this was a different picture. Not a man who didn’t care, but maybe a man who was scared.
“Is it helping?” Harper asked.
“I don’t know yet. It’s only been three sessions, but he did ask to see my sketchbook again last week, unprompted. He sat on the couch, and he looked at every page. He asked me about the marsh painting, a new one I was doing, one I did in watercolor. He even asked what time of day it was.”
“What time was it?” Nina asked.
“Sunrise. I painted it from memory, from the mornings when I sat on the porch before school. I loved to watch the light rise up from over the river.” She paused for a moment. “He said, ‘I didn’t know you got up that early.’ And I said, ‘I’ve been getting up that early for fifteen years, Greg.’ He looked at me, and I could see it, the moment that he understood there was this entire version of me that he hadn’t been noticing.”
The trail curved through a stand of palmetto palms, and a blue heron lifted off from the shallow water near the bank.
“Are you staying?” Nina asked.
Of course, she meant in the marriage. She meant in the house, in the life, in this thing that they’d built so many years ago. She’d been afraid to ask the question because she also knew Claire was probably afraid to answer.
“I’m trying,” Claire said. “I mean, we’re both trying. It’s awkward and messy. I moved back into the bedroom last week, and it felt like sleeping next to a stranger.”
“That’s an upsetting thing to say about someone you’ve been married to for twenty-six years, but it’s honest,” Harper said.
“Yeah, well, honesty is exhausting sometimes. I understand why I counted to three for so long. It’s so much easier to just say the safe thing.”
“Easier isn’t always better,” Nina said.
“No, it’s not.”
“Easy is what keeps you stuck,” Harper said under her breath.
Claire looked over at the river. Nina recognized something on her face because she herself had worn it for over two years. It was the expression of a woman standing in the middle of her life, looking at a mess and wondering if she was capable of cleaning it up or if it was just easier to walk away.
They stopped at a bluff overlooking the river to take a break. Gail tied the horses to a low branch and handed out water bottles she’d brought in her saddlebag. The three of them sat like kids, with their feet dangling over the bluff and looking at the Coosaw River spread out below.
“Harper update,” Nina said.
This had become a tradition because Harper would not volunteer personal information unprompted. You had to ask her. You had to request the Harper report, and even then, she would usually heavily edit it before delivery.
Harper took a drink of water and looked at the river. She was quiet for long enough that Nina started to wonder if she was going to decline the comment at all, which was Harper’s constitutional right and one that she liked to exercise frequently.
“I’m spending Sundays at Jordan’s,” she finally said.
Claire’s water bottle froze halfway to her mouth.
“Sundays?” Claire said, “Like as in every Sunday?”
“As in six Sundays in a row, as in it’s on my calendar with no end date, as in I have a coffee mug there and a drawer. He gave me a drawer.”
Harper said this as though she were receiving some special award, which, for Harper, she supposed, she was.
