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CHAPTER SIX
EVERETT
Flora is still everything I’ve ever dreamed of. Still every bit the woman for me.
Okay, not that I’ve tried it with anybody else. But I don’t have to. I always knew. From the minute she sat down in front of me in our geometry class in high school, I knew this was my girl.
She’s forever my girl. I’m keeping her.
After that tempestuous reunion on the kitchen table, I’m ecstatic to carry her upstairs to my bed, and fall asleep cuddling her just like old times.
But in the morning, everything has changed.
I wake up alone, even though I’m normally the one who gets up earlier. She’s in her room with the door locked, and when I knock and call her name, she doesn’t answer.
Fuck.
What did I do this time?
I decide the worst thing I could do would be to push her, so I just go downstairs and cook breakfast as usual, making the coffee exactly the way she likes it. I’m wearing my gray sweats and no shirt—showing off just a little—and humming while I set the table, thinking about putting up the new wainscoting in the parlor, when she comes in.
She looks tired, and sad.
I stop putting scrambled eggs on plates, and stare. “Are you okay? You didn’t sleep enough?”
She sighs. Tugs her cardigan sweater into place and presses her lips together. “It…it was nice, Ev. It was better than nice. It just—” She falls silent, digging the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. “It doesn’t fix anything between us.”
“No,” I say slowly. “Not in itself. But Flora…I’ll do anything. You want me to move to California, once this house is finished? I’ll do it.”
“You’d hate California,” she says, her voice aching and exhausted.
“Yes. But I’d be with you.”
“You never signed the papers,” she says, changing directions. “Why?”
“Because I loved you. I still love you. And I was wrong.”
She takes her hands away from her eyes. “What?”
“I was wrong.” I scrape the rest of the eggs out of the pan, dividing them evenly. “You needed a career. I didn’t see it until you actually left. I was selfish.”
She doesn’t say anything.
I pour her coffee and set it on the table. I set the plates on the table. I sit. “Sit. Eat.”
She sits, not looking at me.
I eat a bite of eggs. They taste like dust.
“How do I know you mean that?” she whispers, still not looking at me.
“Because I said it,” I say, and sip coffee. That, for a mercy, does taste good. “And because I wrote it to you, every year, on our anniversary.”
“You did not,” she says, but the denial lacks heat. “You can’t prove that.”
“Well,” I say, puzzled, “didn’t you read them? Lord, honey, please don’t tell me you never read them.” My heart sinks in my chest.
For answer, she gets up and rushes back upstairs. I hear her door slam and lock, and then there’s some other kind of disturbance in her room—as if she’s burgling the place her own self.
