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Luke nods. “I know,” and then he says, going back, “I don’t think Penelope liked the house.”
“No? Why not?”
“She said it was too expensive,” he tells me and, chances are, it was. With Penelope unable to work, Luke is always picking up extra shifts to make more money. I worry about Luke sometimes and the way he describes his marriage to Penelope. I worry she emasculates him, that she makes him get down on himself because he doesn’t have a six-figure salary and can’t provide for her in the way another man could, in the way Luke wishes he could.
“There are other houses,” I say, but I can see in Luke’s face that his heart was set on that one. “Maybe after the baby comes, you can keep looking. Where are you coming from now?” I ask. Beneath a winter coat, Luke wears jeans, the mock neck of a dark, half-zip sweater visible through the opening.
He shrugs. “Nowhere.” Luke and Penelope live just a couple blocks from me in a one-bedroom apartment. I didn’t know it when Sienna and I first moved into our apartment, until we ran into each other at Whole Foods. “I’ve just been walking. Penelope and I both needed some time to cool off.”
“Oh,” I say, imagining a heated exchange between the two of them at home, followed by the hostile texts. Fuck you. I can’t judge. Ben and I have been there too but a high-risk pregnancy makes it all worse. “It’s cold to just be wandering.” I say, but I hesitate then because, in light of Penelope’s belief that he was with another woman last night, I don’t want to add fuel to the fire. But then the wind picks up, chilling me to the bone, and I wrap my arms around myself and ask anyway, “Do you want to come inside and talk?”
“I don’t want to put Sienna out,” Luke says, though I see in his eyes that he is considering.
“You wouldn’t. She’s with Ben.”
He looks at his watch. I don’t even know what time it is, but it has to be after nine. “If you’re sure. It’s getting late though. I don’t want to be a nuisance.”
“You’re not a nuisance. Come inside, where it’s warm. I’ll make some tea and we can talk.”
“Okay.”
I turn and climb the concrete steps that lead up to the door, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the front door glass to see that I’m alone. I turn back. I find Luke still standing on the sidewalk, three steps below, his hands in the pockets of his jeans, gazing up at me. “On second thought, I should probably go home.” He’s quiet, thoughtful for a beat, and then adds, “I might pick up some ice cream on the way as a peace offering.”
I smile, though I feel a jab of disappointment at the thought of going inside to a dark and empty apartment alone. I would have relished the company, the conversation so that I didn’t have to be lonely myself, so I didn’t have to think and worry about Nat.
But Luke going home with ice cream as an olive branch, despite knowing he didn’t do anything wrong only reaffirms what I already know: Luke is a good guy.
“You’re right,” he says. “Lying around in bed all day alone would be unbearable.”
Ben never did that. He never saw things from my point of view.
“But so too is working a fifteen-hour shift,” I say. “Penelope is lucky to have you. I hope she appreciates it.”
He shrugs, humble. Maybe she does, maybe she doesn’t.
I say goodbye, waiting for him to turn and walk away, back the way he came. But Luke stays put, saying as he nods toward the door, “You go first, so I know you’re in,” and I appreciate it, not wanting to be left outside alone because, for all I know, someone else is close by and overheard what I just said: that Sienna isn’t home and that I’m alone.
“Good night.”
“Good night.”
I let myself into the foyer. I push the door shut, giving it a gentle tug to be sure it’s closed all the way. Even with Luke just outside watching, you can never be too safe.
Eleven
The next morning I get the urge to go to the pedestrian bridge. The urge is sudden, but it’s not from out of nowhere, because I find myself thinking about Caitlin and what happened all the time, dwelling on the fall itself and wondering what it would have been like to drop from that height.
The day is cold. Ice forms on the inside of the windows in Sienna and my apartment. The sun is out, but the sun, this time of year, is deceiving. It can’t be more than twenty-five or thirty degrees.
I bundle up before I leave, putting on a coat, a hat, gloves and boots, heading out through the door and then walking down two flights of stairs and out the front of the building.
I walk through the snow to Sheridan, where I pay my fare, climb the grimy, narrow, semi-exposed steps, and then I wait, shivering—with my chin tucked into the neck of my coat—on the wooden platform for the train to come. The platform is narrow, an island wedged between tracks, with little if any protection from the elements. For the longest time I worried about Sienna up here alone on the narrow platform, always reminding her not to stand too close to the edge. She could lose her balance or someone could plow into her by accident, and she could fall.
The platform is quiet now. Rush hour has passed, early morning commuters already at work, and I don’t know which I’d prefer: being up here with strangers, or being alone.
A couple minutes pass and then the Red Line rolls in along an S curve, brakes squealing as it jerks to a stop. The doors open and I get on. I look around, letting my eyes run over the nearly empty car, counting the people on the train. There are three including me. I give thought to getting off, to waiting for another train to come—calculating the time I’d have to wait and whether that train would be just as empty—but before I can decide, the doors close and the decision is made for me. The train lurches forward. I stumble into a seat and the train continues on, along the elevated track until eventually it slips underground, moving through dark, choked tunnels beneath the city.
I get off at Roosevelt. I make my way out to the street and then head east on Roosevelt for the Museum Campus. From there, I follow the nearly desolate path further south to Soldier Field. In the summer, this path would be busy with families, with runners, bike riders and museumgoers, but as it is, it’s almost completely uninhabited. The emptiness takes my breath away, and I wonder if I’ve made a mistake in coming.
