“Tom, I—I think I made some unfair assumptions about you. Not just yesterday, but ten years ago. I am not at my best when I’m sorting through a giant mess like this. I become part of the mess.” She hesitated again. “Maybe we should hold off on clearing the air until we’re back in New York and can go to—”
“Marital counseling?” Tom suggested, perking up.
Her eyes rounded at him. “—dinner,” she finished, voice fainter.
“Oh.” He supposed dinner would be better than nothing. And it would be good to give Rosie a glimpse of his normal, Boyd-free, Rosie-friendly life at home, since he wanted to coax her back into it. “But what would you do?”
She sighed. “I’d stay. I would have come out here even if you couldn’t. I know it looks terrible now, but—okay. Just after ourdivorce was finalized, I was…pretty low. It was right before the holidays. Max had me come out here for three weeks with my dirtbag teenage brothers and a couple of my younger cousins. And we did a big Christmas. You know, the whole twelve days, big white elephant party for her friends, homemade fruitcakes and new stockings for the babies, and I—I felt better. Like even if my life wasn’t going to look at all like I’d thought it would, I’d be okay. Because Max had a wonderful time. The whole family did.”
“Yeah,” Tom said softly, because he got that feeling.
Rosie bit her lower lip hard, but she didn’t let go of his hands. “I wish everyone else wasn’t too busy to come out and help, but, you know, most of them have kids now, or a lot more going on at their jobs than I do, so…it’s just on me, I guess.”
“And me,” Tom insisted.
With all the yearning and hurt and anger that had been tied up in thinking about Rosie for years, he’d forgotten what it was like to hold her hand and feel like he could stand between her and the entire world. He wasn’t going anywhere she wasn’t. Not when she’d already told him she’d like to see him actually accomplish something for once.
He knew he could be a better partner this time. He just had to finish this before he got the chance.
He took a deep breath. “I think we cleared the air enough already. And, you know, I’m used to living in a giant mess. I’m amazing with mess. You can count on me.”
“Oh good,” she said, expression brightening. “Because I am actually so glad not to be in charge of the bee stuff.” Her face relaxed into a real smile.
She did an adorable little bounce of her knees, releasing his hands to curl her own into excited fists. She smiled up at him, pretending to jab at the air in a one-two punch. “What did you have planned this morning? You wanna go into town to look at wallpaper with me?”
Wallpaper wasn’t at the top of the list of things he wanted, which contained higher-ranking items likeI sleep in the big bedandSomeone with a clue about construction comes and tells me what to do, but he supposed it was on the list.
“Yeah, I’d love to go check out some wallpaper with you,” he said earnestly.
•••
It was raining hard by the time they got into town, but there were still workers out stripping the gold wire ribbons and lighted artificial greenery from the street lamps and store awnings, heedless of the precipitation as the holiday decorations came down on schedule.
Rosie handed Tom a battered umbrella emblazoned with the name of a multinational consulting firm before cracking the car door and unfurling a much nicer umbrella in poppy-red polka dots. It matched her dress and rain boots, and Tom would have told her she was the sweetest thing he’d ever seen if he’d been certain that was allowed. As it was, he scurried after her to the wallpaper shop, a charming little shingled storefront just off the main drag.
As the doorbell rang in the wallpaper shop, Tom felt as though he’d picked up the script for a different version of himself, a man who hadn’t wrecked his marriage and was walkingin with his wife of twelve years. His mind jumped to fill in the character details in this new role: Did he have the six kids he’d never been sure Rosie was joking about? Did they still live in New York? Did Rosie bring her embroidery hoop to his rehearsals and sit in the third row, stage left, until they broke for the evening, or had he quit theater a few years back so he could coach peewee soccer and order pizza if Rosie had a call with Hong Kong?
He had to blink rapidly so that he didn’t stumble into a display counter.
The only employee in the shop, a middle-aged man in chambray and suspenders, was on the phone when they entered, so Rosie nodded at him and drifted to the far corner, lifting a book of samples at random. She flipped through a few pages before she replaced it and took another.
“Do you have an idea what you’re looking for?” Tom asked.
Rosie trailed her fingers along the texture of one page and shook her head. She browsed through almost a dozen books, finally finding one that interested her. She took it to a table and unfolded a pale green paper that was festooned with tiny woodland creatures doing bucolic, vaguely British things, like wearing funny hats and gardening.
“That’s cute, isn’t it?” Rosie murmured, fingertips brushing a hedgehog with a picnic basket and a deerstalker hat.
Tom nodded.
“Or there’s this one. Look, it has bees. Friendly bees.”
“An alternate history of the place,” Tom said, playing along.
“I could put it in the suite. But Max would say it’s too sentimental.”
“I’m pretty sure Max would be okay with whatever makes you happy,” he pointed out.
She paused with her hands on the pages. “Maybe. There’s just this part of me that thinks that there is a right wallpaper. A perfect one. And if I find it, my family is going to be thrilled. They’re going to see this perfect wallpaper, and they’re going to love it, and they’ll love being here…” Her voice trailed off.
