“Until it didn’t.”
He was quiet. His face was pressed against my hair and I could feel him thinking, the tension in his body that hadn’t been there thirty seconds ago. The King waking up inside the man, the crown settling back onto his head before his eyes were even fully open.
“You know I’m not going anywhere, right?” I said. “When the phone rings and you have to go deal with wolf stuff, I’m not going to disappear. I’ll be here. Or at my house. Or at the shelter stealing cats. But I’ll be here.”
His arm tightened around me. He didn’t say anything, just pressed his mouth against the top of my head and held me while his phone buzzed again on the nightstand. Neither of us moved. Morning light through the curtains, warm on the sheets, his chest rising and falling under my cheek. I pressed my face into him, breathed him in, held close what I knew. I wasn’t afraid of it anymore.
23
— • —
Andrea
I was on the couch with my legs up, half-watching something on my laptop and half-eating cold noodles out of the container, when my phone rang. Hilda’s face filled the screen and I picked up with my mouth full.
“Hi, Gwamwa.”
“Are you eating? You sound like you’re eating.”
“I’m always eating. What’s up?”
“Does something have to be up? Can’t I call my granddaughter?”
“You can. But you usually call on Sundays and it’s Tuesday, so either something’s up or you’ve lost track of what day it is, and either way I’m concerned.”
She laughed and the sound of it made my chest warm because that laugh hadn’t changed since I was five years old and she was chasing me through the garden pretending to be a bear. Same laugh, bright and sharp, and hearing it from five hundred miles away was both a comfort and a gut punch.
“I wanted to hear your voice,” she said. “Is that a crime?”
“Depends. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, Andy. I’m always fine.”
“Grandma.”
“What?”
“You just said fine twice in ten seconds. That’s your tell. You say fine when you’re not fine.”
She paused, longer than usual, and I put the noodles down.
“The house is quiet,” she said, and her voice was softer. “That’s all. It’s quiet. I filled the bird feeder and made dinner and watched my show and then it was eight o’clock and I realized I hadn’t spoken to another person all day except the woman at the pharmacy who told me my prescription was ready.”
“Grandma...”
“I’m not complaining. I have my garden and my books and my church and I’m fine. I just...” Another pause. “I miss having someone here. You, your mother, your father. The house used to be loud, remember? Your father played that terrible music in the kitchen and your mother yelled at him about it and you andI would sit on the porch and listen to them argue about whether Bob Dylan was a genius or a noise violation.”
I laughed and it stung behind my eyes. “He was a noise violation.”
“He was both, sweetheart. Your father had terrible taste in music and excellent taste in women and that’s the nicest thing I ever said about him, don’t tell anyone.”
We kept on talking and catching up. She told me about the tomatoes that wouldn’t cooperate and the neighbor’s dog that dug under the fence again and the new roof tiles she needed but couldn’t afford. I made a mental note to send money this week without telling her, because she’d refuse it and I’d send it anyway and we’d have the same damn argument we’d been having for six years.
“You sound happy,” she said near the end. “Happier than you’ve been in a long time.”
“I am happy.”
“Is it a boy?”
