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"That's what I assumed too." She looked up. "And then he simply sat there. Blaine, he sat in the grass and did nothing at all for a solid hour. I’ve known Gregory for many years, and I’ve never once seen him do nothing."

I didn't have anything to say to that.

"So that's my two cents," said my mother, standing and rinsing her cup. "You’ve been wearing armor for two years, and I have told everybody how marvellously you were doing, which was a lie." She stopped behind my chair. "Do you not realize you are the only person left in this house who is still miserable?"

Mom kissed the top of my head on her way past, and stopped in the doorway.

"Go down there," she said. "Not tonight, necessarily. I'm not an idiot." She pulled her robe closed. "But go down there before Gregory leaves. You'll regret it for the rest of your life if you don't."

Then she went back to bed.

* * *

I sat in that kitchen a long time after she'd gone.

Here's the thing my mother doesn't know, and that I couldn’t say to her.

She thinks the risk is that Gregory leaves me again. That he flies to the other side of the world to make another film, and I lie awake here wondering what is so wrong with me that the man cannot stay on one continent.

But that isn't what frightens me.

What frightens me is that he wouldn't have to leave at all.

That Gregory could stay — could genuinely, finally stay — and I would still be waiting for everything to fall apart. And that one morning I'd start doing to him exactly what I did to Steven. Closing the doors one at a time, so quietly that neither of us would be able to name the day it started.

Except that this time it would be somebody I actually love. He would feel it happening. And I'd get to stand there and watch Gregory Normand work out that he had married a locked door.

I'd be the one who left. I'd simply do it without going anywhere.

I looked out the window at that light down the hill. He's leaving tomorrow, probably. This is the last of it.

So which is it? Do I go down that hill and risk everything on a man who cannot stop staging his own life — or do I stay here, where it's quiet, and let the only person I’ve ever loved drive off this property in the morning?

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Blaine

I didn't go down that night.

I went back up to my room and lay there until the window turned grey, and at some point I stopped pretending I was going to sleep and watched the sun come up instead.

Then I heard tires on the gravel.

I got to the window in time to see a black Suburban come up the drive and stop at the bottom of the lawn. Martin got out of it and stood there with his hands behind his back.

Gregory had called him. Of course he had. I put on my shoes and went down the back stairs in my father's ancient cardigan.

* * *

The guest house door was open.

His bag was on the bed. Not packed — opened, and half filled, in the way people pack when they've been at it a while and keep stopping. There was a shirt of mine folded on top of it, which I noticed and decided not to mention.

He was standing at the little table with his back to me.

"Martin's early," he said.

"I saw him. He's outside."