I drove myself back to the house, leaving the keys to Esther’s truck on the driver’s seat, the way Margaret had done. Eamon was waiting at the kitchen table, but I walked straight past him, to the bedroom, unbuttoning my dress and letting it fall from my shoulders. The mountain air was cool at night, even when the days were warm. I pulled on the nightdress before I braided my hair over my shoulder and turned on the lamp.
The article I’d torn from the newspaper at Esther’s was still in my pocket, and I drew it out, adding it to the others hidden behind the bed. I could hear Annie’s small footsteps trailing after Eamon’s in the house. There was the jostle of dishes in the kitchen. The sound of the kettle. They ate dinner, and he didn’t knock on my door.
I watched their shadows move where the crack of light was shifting on the floor, until the house went dark and silent. I imagined that this was what this home had been like for the last year without me in it. A shell. A tomb.
It was like the embers of a sleeping fire somewhere inside of me, the capacity I had to hold this version of a life. I couldn’t quite grasp it, but that feeling I’d had looking at Eamon as we stood in the glowing lights of the Midsummer Faire had fully manifested now. I didn’t know what was me and what wasn’t anymore. Was I becoming someone else, or was I just finally becoming myself? I couldn’t tell.
Long after the moon rose, when I still hadn’t closed my eyes, I got up and went to the mirror that hung over the dressing table. I drew in a slow breath, my hand finding the thin fabric of my nightgown, and I pressed my palm flat against my stomach. The heel of my hand followed my hip bone.
This body had carried a child. The very thought was an explosion behind my ribs. My heart felt like it was going to break through my chest every time I dared to envision it.
I could see it in my fractured mind, the image of me in that mirror, barefoot and belly swollen. I could feel it.
I bit down on my lip, the vision painting itself in such specifics that I began to think I’d created it from nothing. But this wasn’t the blurred conjuring of imagination. This was like that moment my hand moved up the planes of Eamon’s back, as if it already knew its path.
A soft cry bled through the walls of the bedroom, and I sucked in a breath, my hand curling tight from where it was pressed to my abdomen. Annie was crying that delirious, sleepy sound that surfaced every night like clockwork.
I stilled, waiting for Eamon’s footsteps to follow, but they didn’t come, the empty silence of the house widening. When her cries grew louder, I struck a match and lit the candle on the bedside table.
The glow of the light gathered in the eaves, floorboards popping underfoot as I came out of the bedroom. Eamon’s boots were toppled beside the fireplace, and I spotted his sleeping form on the sofa. One black-stained hand was resting on his broad chest, and he hadn’t even gotten undressed. He was exhausted, too far fallen into a desperate sleep to hear his own daughter’s cries.
Annie’s whimper drifted through the dark, and I crept toward it, my eyes adjusting to the shadows as I moved by the moonlight coming through the window. The lace curtain draped over her nook cast shapes on the wall as I set the candle down on the shelf. She was sitting up, knees curled into her chest and the rag doll in her arms.
She sniffed, hiccuping through another cry.
“Shhhh.” I crouched beside the bed, finding her cold little hands with mine.
I half expected her to call out for Eamon, but she quieted just a little, wiping her face with the doll’s skirt.
“Lie down, Annie,” I whispered, trying to guide her back to the blankets, but she pulled at my fingers.
Before I even knew what I was doing, I was climbing into the bed, scooting behind her so that I could lie against the wall. She settled down, tucking herself beside me. Her feet wedged themselves beneath my legs and she went still. It was only seconds before she fell back asleep.
Her hand loosened on the doll until it rolled between us, and I lay there, watching her, like at any moment I would wake and find myself somewhere else. This felt like one of those memories—where I both belonged and didn’t belong to the slice of time that was playing out.
Her face turned into the candlelight, and I breathed in her smell, like sugar and soap.
The wood floor popped again, making me still, and I searched the darkness until I saw him. Eamon was on his feet, slowly crossing the sitting room until the light painted his face. It was shadowed with sleep, his hair mussed, and he looked so confused, as if he thought he was dreaming. But the waking settled over his features as he looked down at us, a deep breath escaping his lungs.
I waited for him to tell me to go, but he didn’t. He looked at me a long while, and in that space that hung between us, I could feel the tension of countless conversations that would never be had. What did he see when he looked at me? Was it still a counterfeit version of his wife? It didn’t feel like that anymore.
He sat on the edge of the bed, and I watched as he lay down on the other side of Annie. His arm came around her, resting beside mine, and he met my eyes over the tangle of her blond hair fanned out over the pillow. The air grew thick with the weight of what this was—a rendering that was too real. I fit into this space. All three of us did.
The light grew dimmer as the last of the candle melted down, and when it snuffed out, the darkness fell over us. The smell of smoke bled through the air. I couldn’t see Eamon’s face anymore, but I could sense him, the warmth of his body on the other side of the bed. His arm so close to mine that if I moved even an inch, I could touch him. And somehow, I knew what I’d find. I could predict the feel of his skin, the hair that thickened along his forearm and the bones that framed his arm.
His hand found mine, moving up my wrist to my elbow, and my fingers slipped beneath the sleeve of his shirt. We held on to each other, Annie sleeping between us.
It was the first time since I’d come through the door that I didn’t feel like I was broken in two, and it wasn’t until that moment, the red door skipping through my mind, that I realized this was the first day since I came here that I hadn’t looked for it.
No, I hadn’t thought of it. Not even once.
Twenty-Four
The only person who knew the whole truth—all of it—was me. I just had to remember.
Annie was up first, feet shuffling from the sitting room as she rubbed her sleep-heavy eyes. I had a dress out waiting for her, and I helped her into it quietly as Eamon slept, braiding her hair down her back before I tied a little satin ribbon to its end. The strands were like silk in my fingers, that sweet smell of her filling my chest.
When she was dressed, I peeled one of the boiled eggs on the counter and cut a peach into slices, removing the skins without even thinking about it. The fact that she didn’t like them was another dredged-up detail that had the feel of something I’d always known.
I rifled through the chest of Eamon’s clothes until I found one of his button-up work shirts, a blue cotton with brown buttons. I pulled it on, tying up my hair with a bandana while I looked at myself in the mirror.
By the time he woke, I had breakfast ready, and Annie was on her way to Esther’s. I stood in the kitchen, coffee cup in hand, and I had his waiting. Black—he drank it black, I remembered.