“If there’s a trial, she’ll have to be here.”
“Yes, I’ve—Yeah, she knows she can stay here,” she says, but Grant gives her a sideways look.
“Is she afraid of you?” he asks. She scoffs, an almost laugh.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Have you been nice to her? Will she want to stay? You know exactly what I’m asking,” he says, and he’s right. She’s not unaware of the way she comes off, but he, of course, doesn’t know the half of what’s happened.
“She’s here, isn’t she?” Paige says, and he doesn’t reply. She walks away from him and goes to sit on the couch. Grant follows her and sits next to Avery’s bassinet, watching her sleep. He stays that way for an impossibly long time.
“Can I stay on the couch?” he finally asks. And she resists saying what she always says when he asks about something in his own house.It’s your house, too!
Instead she sits next to him and lays her head on his shoulder, a gesture that surprises him: she can tell by the way he tenses and then softens.
“I’ll stay with you,” she says. He lifts his head and looks at her. She knows it’s something he’s been longing to hear her say for almost a year. She gets up and goes to the linen closet and grabs a pile of sheets and blankets. They top up their drinks and curl up close together with Avery next to them.
Paige looks through the dim room out the front window and sees a fingernail moon against a black sky. She finally knows what happened. There is some modicum of hope that she could come to peace with it. In due time, Grant will find out more about what Caleb had become in his last months of life, but right now, she will relish this moment. She remembers hearing the moon described as a dead star that is caught in the earth’s gravitational pull and suspended there forever. This is exactly how she feels—like a dead star being held up by forces beyond her control. She wishes she could stay like this forever.
They sit with their bare feet intertwined and her weight on his chest. She knows she doesn’t deserve his grace, his forgiveness, but she wants it.
“We’ll probably need some help around here,” she says. She thinks she feels his heart quicken, but it’s like him to not respond quickly, especially when it comes to her and the sometimes unpredictable things she says.
“A baby’s a lot of work,” he says, and his voice is calm, but the speed of his heart gives him away.
“Would you wanna help?” she asks. “Maybe move your things back in?” He doesn’t say it in words because she can tell he’s trying to keep his emotions in check. He nods his head a few deliberate times in response, and she can’t see it, but only feels it against her shoulder.
“Good,” she says, and they sip their drinks in the silence.
34
CORA
Finn has been released from jail, and as I get ready to go and pick him up, I think about all the ways I could kill him now that there is no chance some inmate named Face, with a soft spot for middle-aged corporate guys, will shank him in prison. I could drive out to the middle of nowhere, and with each passing mile he would panic, asking over and over where I was taking him until he is finally forced to fling himself from the car onto Highway 6 and get run over by a Freightliner truck.
“Mom!” Mia interrupts my fantasy.
“What? Why are you yelling?”
“I’ve been calling you. Angie Hilliard said that her mom heard from Bevvy Nielson that Dad’s in jail. What the fuck? He’s supposed to take me to soccer at three,” she says.
“Uh...he will. I’m going to pick him up. And don’t use that language. You know better.”
“Was he drunk?” she asks.
“What?”
“Did he get arrested ’cause he was drunk?”
“No. No. Of course not. Why do you think that?”
“He’s drunk a lot. I don’t know, what else could it be?”
“No... It was just a bit of a misunderstanding. I’ll explain later. I gotta go, but don’t worry. He’ll be back before you have to leave,” I say.
When I go out to the driveway, I click the auto-open on my trunk and stand waiting for the hatch to lift when I see Grant across the street. He pulls a small rollie suitcase from his back seat and slams the door of his car shut. I toss a few bags into the back of my car, then shield my eyes from the sun with the palm of my hand and call over to him.
“Morning.” He seems startled.
