Dusk begins to fall and I am anxious for Martin’s return. I set about turning on the electric lights in the house, and then the gas fireplace in the sitting room, as the day’s warmth is leaving the house. As we wait, Kat and I sit by the fire and work on one of the puzzles she chose—a tableau of sketched butterflies of everyshape and color. When darkness falls completely and Martin is still not home, I light the stove and place pork cutlets that I rubbed with butter and dried sage into a roasting pan alongside potatoes and carrots so that supper will be ready when he finally returns.
But he is still gone when the food is ready, and Kat is yawning. I fix her a plate, which she eats, and then I take her upstairs and draw her a warm bath, all the while expecting to hear Martin’s footfalls on the stairs. But I don’t. After her bath, I tuck Kat into bed.
I kiss her good night and close her door nearly all the way, but not quite, despite what Martin said the previous night.
Back downstairs I don’t know what else to do but sit in the dining room with our now-cold meal and wait.
When Martin finally arrives home, it is after nine o’clock and I have fallen asleep at the dining room table, slouched in my chair with my chin at my chest. I awaken to his touch on my arm as he says my name. I startle, nearly knocking over a goblet of water. Martin catches it. Relief mixed with anger races about inside me as Martin sits down in front of his cold supper.
“Where were you?” I say. “I was worried.”
“I told you,” he answers calmly. “I had details to take care of.”
“But... you were gone so long.”
“There were a lot of details.”
He doesn’t sound angry or defensive or even conciliatory. I can’t name the tone with which Martin is answering me.
“I was concerned. I didn’t know... I didn’t...” My voice drops away as the right words don’t come.
“Did you need something while I was out? Did all the deliveries arrive? Was anything amiss?”
“No. Everything is fine. Everything arrived. I put it all away.I made supper. I fed Kat and I put her to bed. And I waited for you.”
“Then what is wrong?”
He is looking at me with those eyes that still nearly take my breath away.
“Your supper is cold.”
“It’s easy enough to warm up, isn’t it?”
I stand to take our plates. Martin bends down to retrieve a newspaper from the satchel he placed by his chair leg.
Martin works as he eats, and I wonder if this is how he was with Candace the night before he left for a spell on the road, absorbed in his preparations. How did Candace sit through a meal like this one with their daughter already in bed and the scraping of tines on plates, the scratching of Martin’s pencil, and the rustling of a newspaper being the only sounds at the dinner table?
After five minutes of watching him work and eat, I break the silence.
“The pork tastes good, I trust?”
He looks up briefly, chewing a bite. “It does.”
His tone is sincere, but the next second he is back to his work.
I hesitate only a moment. “May I ask you a question?”
“What is it?”
“It’s about Candace. If you don’t mind.”
I thought he might glance up at the mention of his first wife’s name, but he does not. “Yes?”
“Was it... was it hard for her when you were out on the road so much? Was this kind of life one that she got used to rather quickly?”
He looks up. “This wasn’t the kind of life we had.”
“No?”
