Page 32 of Promise

I shake my head, unable to answer, as I’m still processing everything myself.

Mom slowly nods once. “Okay then. Do you think that’s a good idea? Letting him stay with you?”

Something in the way she asks, almost like she thinks it’s a good idea but wants to know my opinion, has me tilting my head.

I don’t think it’s a good idea that he stays, because I have other concerns.

“He’ll leave,” I mutter, turning my head, looking toward the kitchen cabinets, while not really focusing on them. “Eventually.”

I still hadn’t forgotten that nugget of information about his racing career. How it was probably over, but definitely on a break.

“And what if he doesn’t?” Mom counters, not letting the issue rest. Her questions are asked out of love and concern for me.

“Guess I’ll cross that bridge if it gets built.”

I would have never pegged Dart as someone who would run from problems. Never pegged him as someone who might lie to me either, like keeping our non-existent divorce from me.

But I also recall that Dart did ask me to come with him. He might have wanted to run away, but he wanted me to go with him.

And I’d said no.

Our separation had done me some good. Mentally, I was in a better space. Without the pressure of trying to get pregnant, I had to refocus my attention. I took it inward. I looked at me. Where I’d gone wrong in our marriage. How I could have done things differently. Who I should have been and who I wanted to be. And I’d done it all for me.

Because Dart was gone.

Like the namesake of this town, he would go rogue again despite what he initially promised.

For better or worse.

And my heart was not up for drowning in him a second time.

11

[Dart]

Trinity didn’t return home from wherever she went until the summer sky was turning dark. By then, I’d scraped off all the old shingles on the roof. Tomorrow, I’ll start rolling out the roofing paper needed before I can lay new shingles. Thankfully, rain is not in the forecast.

Re-roofing the house on my own was a daunting process, but something that needed to be done. While I didn’t want to return to construction work, it felt good to be productive. To accomplish something, even if I was sore from the exertion.

My ribs ache. My head has a low hum of pain in it.

I take a shower in the guest bathroom on the second floor, discovering the showerhead needs to be replaced. The water pressure sucks.

While Trinity was perfectly capable of taking care of certain things on her own—she could tackle replacing a showerhead herself—I’d always been the handyman around here. I took pride in the little touches. The wainscoting panels. The chair rail detail. The tile job in the bathroom.

My hands made these improvements. Our vision was a home, not just a house.

The overall appearance of this place is immaculately clean, minus the sudden explosion of baby apparatus. Trinity made some changes in my absence, and the space feels more feminine, reminding me of her first apartment.

That place was small but cozy. She had all these damn pillows on the couch and affirmations on the wall, and a giant poster that looked like a pussy that she swore were flower petals.

I’d never lived anywhere so nice, other than her parents’ house, which was why I loved to spend the night at her place. She had sturdy coffee mugs, and her silverware matched. Stuff I didn’t give a shit about other than when I was near her.

Eventually, she’d turned this dump of a house into a beautiful home, and I loved this place. Loved every crooked wall and refinished plank of wood on the floor.

But home improvement wasn’t a one-and-done deal, and it was a good metaphor for our marriage.

We changed. The loss of three babies can do that to a couple. We couldn’t just put a fresh coat of paint over old wounds. We couldn’t caulk the cracks in our marriage. We needed to renovate ourselves.