“Dude, what?”
Upstairs, I push open the door to her bedroom with my foot and gently set her down. I turn to face the wall as she drops her jeans and slips her bra off under her shirt.
She says quietly with a laugh, “It’s nothing you haven’t seen before, Ewan.”
“I know that. And as much as I like to remind you that I’m your husband, I am also a man who recognizes boundaries. We’re not together anymore, and we are also different people.”
She slips under the covers, and I tuck the blankets up to her shoulders.
“We’re not all that different from who we were,” she says sleepily.
She rolls to her side and snuggles into her pillow, the same as she always did when we were young.
“Do you want me to turn on the TV?”
“No,” she whispers.
I turn to leave, and she asks. “How did Rowdy recognize your dog?”
That’s a lot to unpack. “He’s met Pascal before. I’ll explain later. Get some sleep, Maddie.”
She mumbles something but she’s too tired to pry that information out of me.
I head downstairs, and Rowdy hasn’t left. He’s waiting for me in the kitchen and follows me around, asking questions as I gather ingredients to make a healing chicken noodle soup for my wife.
“So, what happened?”
I hand him an onion and the cutting board. “Dice this, and I’ll tell you.”
He grabs a knife, an onion, and a cutting board and starts to work while I fire up the stove and toss in some broth and some leftover rotisserie chicken I find in the fridge. I also find some leftover Chinese takeout with rice noodles and vegetables, and toss it into the broth.
I explain everything, beginning from the moment that Pascal found Maddie lying half in and half out of her house.
The onion, garlic, and some turmeric, for a good measure, go into the soup. Once, in my apartment building in Nashville, my elderly Indian neighbor made me golden milk when I got sick and said turmeric helped kick viruses out of my body. It turns the soup a bright yellow color like marigolds.
“I don’t get it. I thought you were staying up at that cabin in the mountains for a couple of weeks.”
I stir the soup and tell him, “I moved in across the street about a month ago.”
Rowdy scoffs. “You mean right after I told you to leave her alone? That she shouldn’t see you because it would just add more stress to her already stressed-out condition?”
“Yep,” I say, handing him a spoon to stir the soup with while I assemble the food tray. Electrolytes, a sliced apple, a piece of buttered toast, and finally, a generous helping of soup.
“When were you planning to tell me you bought a frickin’ house?” Rowdy asks.
“I was getting around to it,” I say.
He smirks. “The same way you were getting around to filing for divorce after being separated for 10 years?”
“Something like that,” I say.
He follows me to the foot of the stairs. “I’m glad you’re back, brother.”
“I’m glad to be back.”
“Once Maddie’s out of the woods, I want to invite you guys over to my house for a beer. You guys and Foster.”
“I still don’t like that guy,” I say. I’ll do it, though. I don’t like it that he got to Maddie first. I don’t like it that he put his hands on her, but the rational part of my brain knows I should be thanking him. “But I’ll get over it.”
