Page 162 of Never Alone
"Stop being careful."
So I did.
She had the ring against my chest.
That was the thing I kept noticing. Her hand on my chest. The ring on her finger. The cool of the metal where it sat on my skin and warmed and got cool again when she moved her hand and warmed again when she stopped. Her hair was on the pillow. The afternoon light through the window had moved from gold to copper to amber across the floor.
This is my wife.
The word landed harder than I had been ready for.
I had not let myself think of the word in months. I had been calling her Tessa. I had been calling her Tessa to the crew, to the lawyer, to Noah's school, to anyone who asked. The word fiancée had been a thing I used when I had to and avoided when I could. The word wife had been a thing I didn't let myself think.
She was going to be my wife.
She was going to be here tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after.
I had been waiting thirty-four years to know that.
She was looking at me.
Her chin was on my chest. The hair on the side of her face was the hair she had been letting grow back out since November. Her eyes were the green of the room.
"Where'd you go?"
I came back from where I'd been. I came back to her chin on my chest.
"Here."
She lifted her head a fraction. She watched me to see if I meant it.
"Yeah?"
"Yeah."
The watching had not stopped. She was running her thumb along the bone of my sternum, light, the way she ran her thumb along the rim of a coffee mug when she was thinking.
"Cole."
I waited for her to give me what the name was the front of.
"Tessa."
The real name. The name she had stopped using and started using again on a Wednesday in November, when I had told her I didn't see why she hated her eyes. The name she had asked me to use after the case had closed. The name on the marriage certificate she would sign soon.
I said it again.
"Tessa."
She closed her eyes.
I thought, briefly, about Shelby. About her kitchen on Marlboro Street. The recipe box. The cookies she had made for me on Sundays, the flour on the front of her T-shirt.
The thought arrived and didn't hurt the way it used to.
That was all.
I came back to the ring on her finger, her hair on the pillow, and the light on the floor.
