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He listened for a second longer once the message ended, expecting to hear an off-handed, “Toodles.” Leigh was someone you could picture saying toodles.
He hadn’t talked with Quinn about her writing; they hadn’t talked, period. Should he tell her Leigh had called? Probably—he should be up front with her.
Besides, if she found out from Leigh instead of him, she would be pissed. Previous lesson learned; he would be honest.
But, was their . . . their . . . whatever this was, all twelve mind-blowing hours of it at last count, complicating things for her? She might need him as an escape, but he didn’t want to distract her from her work. She was talented; the last thing he wanted was to stand in her way.
Wait, no. If he were being honest, the real last thing he wanted was for what they were doing to end.
* * *
She stoodin the closet looking from the rack and shelving on the right side to the rack and shelving on the left side, trying to settle on a place to start.
But Harris’s closet was a funhouse of cruel tricks and apparitions. His hanging suits were missing the body she could clearly see; his shoes lacked the feet and long, muscular legs she pictured striding confidently toward her; his casual shirts and neatly folded pile of jeans taken out of service. No longer required for his walks on the beach and into town for the farmers’ market, Saturday café brunch, a visit to the hardware store.
She could still see in her mind his dirty handprints on the thighs from pulling stray weeds in the garden.
It should be impossible to be lost in such a small space. Because if she could sleep with another man, undress and stand naked before him and beg him to fuck her, shouldn’t she be able to start sorting her dead husband’s things?
Standing here, now, though, it felt as if her betrayal might be in the sorting more than the fucking. There was no way in, no way to begin this process of sectioning him from her life.
The sound of Leigh’s ringtone interrupted and, for once, it inspired gratitude and motivation to answer, not dread. She raced out of the closet to her phone, tossed on the bed earlier.
“I know you won’t like this,” Leigh started in when Quinn answered, “but Nely wants to meet.”
Her stomach lurched, although it was no surprise.
The publisher had been asking for an outline for months, and Quinn hadn’t sent one; they asked for pages, and she didn’t produce any. She requested an extension; they granted one. The new deadline was here, and the ball was in her court.
She was standing still while it bounced, then sputtered, past her.
Leigh continued. “They’re trying to help . . . They want to see you get another book out. They want to discuss ideas together, you know, define a narrative arc so you have bones to work with . . . By the way, have you reached out to Jonathan?”
Writing on deadline had not daunted her before. Other writers described this experience too—the ideas seeming to come to her, not from her. She watched the movie play in her mind and took good notes, pausing to get a closer look at the colors and textures, to listen to the words, to figure out what was going on in the characters’ heads and hearts.
That’s where she had been the day Harris died, and for several days before, on a writing retreat at an artists’ colony funded by a two-month Hollinger Fellowship to brainstorm, outline, and start her next book.
She hadn’t wanted to leave him for so long, but the movie in her mind had pulled like a magnet, out of everyday life and into that mystical place where all she had to do was watch, listen, probe a little, and put it all to paper.
What she wouldn’t give now to have had just one day, one hour, of that week back. One minute even, enough time to say a last goodbye.
“Can you hear me now? Hellooo?” Leigh’s voice squawked through the phone.
“Yes, yes, sorry. The Bistro, for drinks and appetizers, four o’clock.”
“Can I pick you up?” Leigh-code forI’m worried you won’t show.
“That’s okay. I’ll be there,” Quinn said, trying to sound reassuring. Shewouldgo to the meeting. She would keep an open mind about getting back to work, even though her heart had been emptied of words.
It wasn’t only her heart; her whole being felt as if it had been turned upside down, emptied, shaken until there was nothing left, the contents of her old self ricocheting and scattering on the ground.
All the pieces of her stories too were strewn around her, but she didn’t recognize them anymore. The glue, her grounding, her capacity to piece them together—gone.
Grief and guilt were the only things left inside, holding tight, unwilling to let go.
The house had been emptied, too. The furniture was there still, and all the things they had collected over their two decades. But where there used to be warmth and laughter and soulfulness, now there was only darkness, desolation, and cold, a trio as real and solid as stone.
Some days, she would stand on the balcony outside their room, her face turned toward the sun to try to remember warmth, but while her skin heated, the rest of her remained hollow and cold.
