Page 108 of Never Alone
Tessa didn't move.
Miranda put a hand on her shoulder. Tessa nodded, once. Her shoulders didn't come down.
Nicholas stayed at his table. He didn't look at me. He didn't look at Tessa. He folded a piece of paper into thirds, slowly, taking his time. His lawyer had a hand on his arm. Nicholas shook it off without looking and went on folding.
A man losing in public was supposed to do something. Nicholas didn't.
I didn't like it. I filed it.
The first week, I told myself it was the schedule.
Tessa had changed Noah's pick-up. Sam and Jamie were happy to take him after school. Noah, Ben, and Jack had become a unit. Tessa was working later at the bakery to make up for the weeks the case had eaten. She picked Noah up on her way home. By the time they came in the apartment door, Noah was already half-asleep on his feet. Tessa would put him to bed, come out, run the dishwasher, say good night, and go back to the bedroom we shared and turn out the lamp on her side before I had finished in the kitchen.
I worked. I came home from my off shifts, and the apartment was quiet. Tessa was at the bakery. Noah was at school. The kitchen had been wiped down. There were leftovers in the fridge with my name on a Post-it. The Post-it was new.
The first week, I told myself she was tired. The case had ended only days ago. The body didn't catch up to a thing like that fast. She was sleeping the sleep of a woman who'd been sleeping with one eye open for eight months and had finally been told she could close it. That was what I told myself.
The second week, I knew better.
She didn't look at me. She didn't look at me when I came into a room, and she didn't look at me when she came into one. When I said good morning, she said it back, friendly, the way she said it to a customer. When I asked her how the bakery was, she saidgoodand meant it, and went back to whatever she was doing without looking up. When Noah hugged me on the way to school, she watched the door, not us.
She used to watch Noah hug me. I knew the difference.
I didn't ask. I should have. I didn't because I didn't know what I was asking. I had a list of possibilities, and none of them fit. The almost-kiss in the green room—she'd tilted her chin up. She hadn't pulled back. Will at the barbecue—Quinn had handled it. The hearing—we'd won. There was nothing, in any direction I looked, that explained why a woman who'd let me pick her up from work for six weeks was now coming home in the dark with a tin of bread and going to bed without looking at me.
On the eleventh day, I came off a twenty-four. Empty apartment. Empty kitchen. Post-it on the fridge:Pasta in the blue container.—T.
She'd stopped writing my name.
I stood in the kitchen with the Post-it in my hand for a minute. Then I put it on the counter and went to bed.
I slept for four hours and gave up. I made coffee. I ate a sandwich I didn't taste. I did laundry. I watched the afternoon drain out of the windows.
At seven-fifteen, I picked up my keys and got in the truck.
Mrs. Thompson's bakery closed at six. It was seven-thirty when I parked.
The lights at the front of the shop were off. The Open sign had been turned. The door, when I tried it, was unlocked.
I stepped inside.
The bell above the door rang, the way it always rang. The bakery in the dark smelled the way a bakery smelled in the dark—warm sugar gone cool, butter, the faint yeast smell that lived in the walls. The display cases had been cleared and wiped down.
Tessa was behind the counter. Mrs. Thompson's laptop was open in front of her. The light from the screen was on her face.
She looked up when the bell rang.
"We're closed, Cole."
"I know. I'm not here for the bread."
She didn't answer.
I stopped three feet from the counter. The counter was between us. I let it be.
"Are you avoiding me?"
"No. I've just been staying later at the bakery because Mrs. Thompson lets me use her computer to look for a new apartment."
