“You did good,” Maude said, not looking at me. “You told him to leave and he left.”
“I didn’t collapse with the first breath,” I said. “Only the second.”
“Second breaths will get you,” she said, and that felt true enough. She reached out, pinched my chin lightly between finger and thumb the way grandmothers do. “Go on, now.”
Upstairs, steam curled from the bathroom like an invitation. Gideon had turned the light down low, set the salts by the tub, and—because he was who he was—laid a towel over the cool rim so my forearms would have a soft place to rest. The bath was drawn to the line where heat meets comfort, and the surface wore a slick of lavender that smelled like a memory I couldn’t quite place. Somewhere safe.
“I can—” he started, and then corrected himself with that perfect mix of competence and consent. “Do you want help with anything or should I wait right out there?”
“I can manage the mechanics,” I said. “Stay?”
“Right here.” He took up sentry on the other side of the cracked door, back against the hallway wall, silhouette patient. “If you need me, say my name. I’ll hear you.”
I closed the door just enough. When I eased into the water, heat took my breath in a clean way and gave it back warmer. I tipped my head under and let my hair tug-free in the current. The sounds of the house shifted through water’s filter—footsteps, a cupboard, the faint clink of a mug—domestic noises made dreamy.
In the bath, the courthouse came back in clearer relief. The sticky hinge. The way the judge’s signature slanted downhilllike it had somewhere else to be. I remembered how proud I’d been at eighteen and how that pride thrummed now under the bruised part of me, insisting on itself. Hazel Bradford. The stamp of it still on my tongue. A choice I’d made and remade and remade.
I thought about Aunt Michelle, stirring a pot, calling into the living room: “You’re Hazel Bradford. Practice saying it.” I’d rolled it around my mouth until it fit right and then I’d labeled everything with it—mailbox, email, a little brass plate on the door of my first office.
He had found me, anyway.
I stayed in the tub for what felt like a long while. When the water cooled from perfect to pleasant, I pulled the plug and watched it whirl away. There was something satisfying about the circle of it, the way it chose a direction and committed. I wrapped myself in the blue towel and padded into the bedroom, hair dripping onto my shoulders, skin pinked by heat.
Gideon was exactly where he said he’d be, arm crooked on his knee, head tipped toward the door like a man listening for a frequency only he could hear.
“I didn’t drown,” I reported.
“Good,” he said gravely. “I was prepared to perform a dramatic, shirtless rescue.”
I snorted. “We’re fresh out of damsels.”
“Noted,” he said, and stood, eyes scanning me like he was taking a measurement only he knew what to do with. Not lustful—though I could see the pulse point on his neck argue for a moment—but assessing for hurt. “Tea’s incoming,” he added. “And Maude’s insisting you take the big bowl of casserole to bed.”
“I won’t take no for an answer,” Maude called from farther down the hall. “Also there’s whipped cream if you want me to gild the lily.”
“Please,” I called back, grateful, and she laughed.
Gideon handed me a soft T-shirt he must have thieved from his drawer and stepped back while I tugged it on. He shook out the blankets like he was unrolling a map and then, when I slid between cool sheets, set a tray on my lap with a mug, a honey pot, and a wedge of something bubbling.
“Do you want to talk more?” he asked. “Or do you want quiet?”
“Talk,” I said, surprising myself. “You should know … everything. Or close. If it isn’t too much for you.”
“It’s not.”
He sat on the edge of the bed, thigh pressed against my shin.
“I told you about Michelle,” I said. “Her husband—Joseph—he was better with weekends than mornings. He drove me to school on the first day of sophomore year because my hands shook too hard to steer and he said, ‘hands are for shaking or steering, not both’ and we laughed so we wouldn’t cry. He moved to Arizona after she died. We talk on holidays. I don’t have siblings. No cousins, either. I have friends, but they’re spread thin with kids and life. It’s … mostly me.”
“Not anymore,” Gideon said.
My throat did a traitor thing. “I keep things orderly because it helps,” I confessed. “Batteries in the laundry room. Flashlight in the nightstand. It makes the world behave enough to let me sleep some nights.”
“I like a plan,” he said, not reaching to fix anything, just making space for the way I lined the shelves of my mind.
“I thought … if I could be meticulous enough, careful enough, I could make a geometry the world would respect.” I looked down at the tea and watched the steam unwind itself into the air like a tame snake. “And then he stepped into the dining room downstairs and said my name and it didn’t matter what I labeled or locked.”
“It matters,” he said quietly. “Order doesn’t make a man like that stop. But it makes you who you are.”
