From behind her, Will made a noise—sort of a snort-guffaw. Emily had known since the shower curtain rod! That was . . . a while, then.
The actual whole time!
“I’m sorry!” Nora said, knee-jerk. “I mean, for not—”
“It’s your business,” said Emily quietly. “There’s no reason to apologize.”
Nora blinked at them in surprised silence, her brain still catching up to the stress of the last several hours, to the relief of having come back to Will’s waiting arms and her neighbors—these two and Mrs. Salas, at the very least—unbothered by the whole entire thing. She knew there was so much stress ahead, knew she still felt a rattle of nerves throughout her body when she thought of Jonah, but it felt good, for now, to have this part feel so easy.
Marian picked up a brown bag from the seat beside her and held it out to Nora. “Come on and eat your food. This man brought you a muffin that’s as big as a baby’s head.”
Nora took the bag, extremely wishing Marian had not compared its contents to a head of any kind, and then turned to look at Will, who was watching her, his expression a mixture of amusement and concern. When she moved to sit on one of the small couches across from Marian and Emily, he stayed standing, the lightness falling away from his expression.
“I’m going to go check at the nurse’s station,” he said. “To see if—”
“Will,” she said, patting the seat beside her, wanting him to feel as settled about things as she did. “Come on.”
“I tried to be careful,” he said quietly, when he sat down. “When I came over, I mean.”
She shrugged and opened the bag, the smell of sugary goodness wafting up, and her mouth watered. “It’s okay,” she said, reaching in. “I’m relieved they know. I was going to tell them anyway, if . . .”
She trailed off, focusing on her head muffin.If you’d said you wanted to choose me, too.She was glad to have something to stuff in her face for the time being.
He set a hand on her thigh and checked his phone. “We should hear something pretty soon, I’d guess, judging by how long this surgery usually takes.”
Nora nodded and chewed, watching Marian and Emily across the way, watching as Will easily joined into their conversation—asking Emily about the plant in the corner (“It’s not a real plant,” Emily said, and Nora had a feeling Will already knew that but wanted to give Emily a laugh), talking to Marian about the next poetry night (“I’ve been getting into poetry,” Will said to her, and Marian gave him a look like he was 100 percent lying). She thought about all the things she’d feared that day Will had crashed the building meeting—all the ways she thought she was letting Nonna down, all the ways she thought she was letting her neighbors down.
But right now, in this bland, uncomfortable waiting room, Nora watched Will make conversation with two of her toughest-crowd neighbors, all the while waiting for a health update on the man who was, no doubt, the third toughest. She thought about Nonna and how she liked good manners and pleasant conversation and anyone who liked marinara sauce, and also anyone who liked Nora. Nonna would have been charmed, for sure. Real estate feuds aside, Nonna would have liked having Will as part of this little family.
He’s come around, she told herself firmly, and with a small sigh of relief, she finished the last of her muffin, rested her head against Will’s shoulder, and settled in to wait.
Chapter 18
Eventually, Marian and Emily went home, too.
The doctor had called around nine, reporting that Jonah was out of the surgery on his leg, doing fine in recovery, no complications. Nora had sagged against Will, already reaching for her phone to call Benny. Marian and Emily had both pressed their hands together and closed their eyes, twin prayers of thanks before they’d turned to hug each other tight. It’d be a while longer before Jonah would be transferred to his room for the night, and Nora had insisted that Marian and Emily go, had promised that she’d stay the whole night through.
“I’ve got all my things, anyway,” she’d said, gesturing toward her suitcase, and Emily and Marian had both turned their eyes on Will expectantly.
“I’m staying,” he’d said, and it felt like their official seal of approval when they’d nodded and finally agreed to make their way home.
Alone with Nora, the immediate crisis mitigated, he wondered if it would turn awkward between them—things they hadn’t said, but things they’d agreed not to talk about here. But for Will, at least, it was the opposite of awkward. It came so easy to him this way—to get her tea, to help her wrangle things out of her messily packed suitcase so she could go wash her face, to answer every medical question she had about Jonah, who hadn’t been brought to a room until after midnight, to arrange his body so she could rest comfortably against him. It all felt so practical, so responsible. So safe.
He recognized her energy from many days and nights he’d spent checking in on families—tired but teed-up, relieved but worried. With her head on his thigh and her legs draped over the arm of the tiny love seat, she told him all kinds of things he didn’t know, origin stories for how everyone had ended up in the building. Jonah had grown up nearby, the only child of parents who’d run a small grocery store less than five blocks away; he’d moved in after he married a woman who’d eventually left him (and the apartment) after only three months to move to Maine with a man Jonah worked with. Mr. and Mrs. Salas had moved in after they’d sold their place in Bucktown, only ever intending to stay for a few years but eventually making peace with the fact that their son would be staying for good in Singapore, the place where he’d gotten a job in finance after college. Benny’s aunt Alma had lived in the building, and because he’d been her favorite, because he’d stayed with her for long periods when his own mother was ill, he’d taken over the lease way back when Alma had moved into a rest home. Marian and Emily—both from small, somewhat challenging families—had come to the building only two years after they’d graduated from college, the place where they’d met and fallen in love.
Nora’s grandmother, for her part, had moved in as a widow, surprising Nora’s mother—her only child—by selling her paid-off house in the suburbs and moving into an apartment that she’d always said had something special about it.
“Those little angels in the hallway,” Nora said, her feet swinging gently back and forth, “I think that’s what sold her. She loved things like that.”
Nora thought Nonna had needed a new start, had needed to make a home only for herself after so many years of focusing on making her husband comfortable. “And with my mom so far away, she needed a new family, too, I think,” Nora had said.
Will didn’t miss that she’d skipped over whatever she might’ve known about Donny and his history with the building, a kindness that made him love her all the more. Instead, she went right on ahead to the year her grandmother had led the effort to take the building condo, to all the moments where various building traditions were born. Will listened and stroked his fingers idly through her hair, recognizing this for what it was: not only Nora winding herself down but also Nora giving him her full trust, giving him the history of the building that had been the source of their feud. As she spoke, her voice got lower and slower, her eyes closing longer and longer on each blink.
Orphans, kind of, he thought, thinking through the stories she’d told him—grown-ups upended for one reason or another, making their own family unit even amid weird wallpaper and awful wall sconces. For the first time since he got the call from Donny’s lawyer, he let himself imagine that his uncle had left him the apartment not as some kind of cross-generational slap in the face but instead as some kind of offering. Some kind of apology, or gesture of understanding. From one orphan to another, maybe. A belated gift Donny—for whatever angry, grudging reason—hadn’t been able to give Will sixteen years ago.
He felt strangely, surprisingly grateful to his uncle.
Against his leg, Nora’s head felt heavier, her body earnestly sinking into sleep now. “Not gonna drool this time,” she murmured. “Because I’m not sick.”
