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Maggie doesn’t even have to think about this. She doesn’t even have to think if Gwyn knows. Ten minutes with Gwyn, and she knows that Gwyn knows everything: the way so many people do who are underestimated, for a million reasons or one, and therefore have more time to pay close attention.
“Yes,” she says.
She makes herself meet Nate’s eyes, wondering what he is thinking, wondering if he is mad at her now, too. And maybe he should be, maybe she would be if the situation were reversed. She has no proof about Eve, nothing really close to proof. But maybe being mad—either of them, both of them—isn’t so dangerous anymore, and doesn’t feel like the thing she should be running from at such incredible speeds. Maybe her fear of anger, and discomfort—both of their fears of that—has contributed to all of this. It has kept them less honest.
She is surprised he hasn’t yet asked her: why is she saying this, why is she telling him right now, even if it is true?
“Okay, well . . .” he says. “I’ll have to think about that.”
And maybe they are being honest now, because he does it— what he seemed to be unable to do before. He looks annoyed, really annoyed in a way that seems to indicate that he isn’t going to retreat, but step farther in.
“So you’ll be here when I get back from the hospital?” he says. “Do I get to ask you that?”
She nods.
“Does that mean I get to ask that or that you’ll be here?”
“Either, both.”
“Same answer?” he says.
“Same answer,” she says.
She knows he needs her to say something, something hopeful, but she isn’t sure what to say. And then Denis honks from the car. He honks, in beat, and it takes Maggie a minute to place it, for what it is. A song. A song she can recognize. “Harvest” by Neil Young. The very song she was listening to that morning. What are the odds of such a thing? What are the odds?
“I think that’s ‘Harvest’ he is strumming out there on the horn,” she says. “I’m pretty sure. I’m pretty sure that is what is happening.”
He looks in the direction of the car. “That’s something,” he says, raising his eyebrows.
“No, you don’t understand. I was listening to it this morning,” she says. This morning in Red Hook. It feels impossibly far away now. And yet it’s not, is it? If she can still remember the song she was listening to, it’s only as far away as she decides it needs to be.
Nate reaches out and touches her cheek, first with the outside of his fingers, then with the insides. “You listen to it every morning,” he says. Then he pauses. “Don’t think too much while I’m gone, okay?”
“I was just starting to get somewhere hopeful.”
He shakes his head. “Still, that can flip on a dime.”
She smiles. “So what should I do instead?”
“Well, you’re an excellent cleaner . . .”
She shrugs. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
He smiles. “I’ll be back soon. We’ll start today over.”
“There’s no starting over, Nate,” she says.
He has started to walk off the porch, but he turns back, holds her gaze. “So, we’ll figure out a way,” he says. “To start here.”
Gwyn
She stands looking through the small window on the hospital room door at her husband holding her daughter. They are lying on the far bed in the room, the other bed empty. Georgia is not in labor—false or any other kind—but she is too worked up to go home tonight. And really, what home would she go to? There is a tree in the middle of the one Gwyn has to offer her.
Georgia is better off here: Thomas’s arms wrapped around her, her head buried in his chest. His suit wrinkled, the jacket still on. He hasn’t even thought to take it off, to loosen his tie. But who is focused on what makes sense, on changing clothes, on getting on with it? Thomas isn’t. From here, from where Gwyn stands, her husband is focused on only one thing now, keeping Georgia calm.
Gwyn holds a paper tray of watered-down decaf coffees from the hospital cafeteria. They are terrible and too hot, but they would be welcomed by both of them. She is planning to give them the coffee and then head home to get a change of clothes for Georgia. She plans to head home to get Georgia whatever she needs to stay here. Still, she can’t seem to make herself move. She stays where she is, doesn’t make a move to go in. But maybe she should have. Because, a moment later, as she is still standing there, she feels her presence behind her. Eve.
Gwyn doesn’t say anything at first. She leaves it in Eve’s court to do whatever she has come here to do.
