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“Like where?”
I think of Jake’s offer. I think of New York.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “But we don’t have to be in Sausalito, do we? I mean, we don’t have to stay there for any legal reason, correct?”
“Not officially, but it won’t look good,” he says. Then Grady pauses. He pauses as if hearing something.
“Wait. Why did you just say ‘there’?”
“What?”
“You said, we don’t have to stay there. Talking about your house, talking about Sausalito. If you were home, you would have said ‘here.’ We don’t have to stay here.”
I don’t say anything.
“Hannah, I’m sending one of my colleagues over to check on you,” he says.
“I’ll put on some coffee,” I say.
“This isn’t a joke,” he says.
“I don’t think it is.”
“So then where are you?” Grady says.
If Grady wants to trace my phone call, I know he can do it. For all I know he is already trying to do it. I look out at Grady’s hometown, wondering
what it’s been for my husband.
“Where are you worried I’ll be, Grady?” I say.
Then, before he can answer, I hang up the phone.
One Year Ago
“You think you can just pop in here whenever you want?” I said.
I was joking. But I was surprised that Owen snuck up on me, showing up at my workshop unannounced, in the middle of the workday. He didn’t usually do that. He spent his days at the offices in Palo Alto, sometimes heading to downtown San Francisco for a meeting. He was rarely home on a weekday, except when Bailey needed him for something.
“If I popped in whenever I wanted, I’d be here constantly,” he said. “What are we making?”
He rubbed his hands together, happy to be in the studio with me. He loved my work, loved being a part of it. And every time I saw how genuinely he felt that way, it was another small reminder how lucky I was to love him.
“What are you doing home so early?” I asked. “Is everything okay?”
“That depends,” he said.
He lifted my face shield to give me a kiss hello. I was in my work clothes—which consisted of a high-necked jacket and that face shield—a combination that made me look like I belonged in the future and the past at the same time.
“Is my chair finished?”
I kissed him back, draping my arms around his shoulders.
“Not quite yet,” I said. “And it’s not your chair.”
It was a Windsor chair I was making for a client in Santa Barbara, for her interior design office, but as soon as Owen had seen it in progress—the dark, chiseled elm; a heightened hoop back—he decided we couldn’t let it go. He decided it was meant for him.
“We’ll see about that,” he said.
