Page 163 of Never Alone
I came back to my wife.
The doorbell went at five.
It went again at five-oh-three. By five-fifteen, the house was full.
Sam and Jamie came in with Jack and Ben and a casserole dish. Jamie took one look at Tessa and me coming down the stairs together, and her face did the thing it did when Jamie had figured something out. She didn't say anything. She kissed my cheek on her way to the kitchen.
Rosie came in with Quinn and Aunt Jenna. Rosie was home from Wake Forest for spring break. She crossed the front hall and hugged me without asking. Then she looked at me over her shoulder as she walked toward the kitchen.
"Told you you weren't coming out of this unscathed."
She had the smile she had been wearing since she was twelve. The one she’d learned from Jamie. The one that didn't give you any room to argue.
I didn't argue.
Tyler and Elena came in with a six-pack. Sean and Carol came in with a bottle of bourbon. Megan and Danny came inwith Ethan and Keith. Martinez came in with a bag of chips from the gas station and the expression of a man who had brought what he had.
Keith stopped me in the hallway after he’d walked through the house.
"Cole."
"Keith."
He hadn’t taken his coat off. He’d walked the whole house with his coat still on, looking at the corners the way Keith looked at corners.
"You finished the kitchen."
"Yeah."
He nodded the small nod that was Keith's whole face moving when Keith approved of something.
He had his hands in his pockets. He was looking at the framing of the doorway he had made me widen against my argument last summer.
"When you started this, I thought you'd give up at the kitchen."
"So did I."
He let the quiet sit a beat. Keith let quiets sit. He had a brother who talked enough for both of them.
"Glad you didn't."
That was the whole conversation.
He went into the kitchen, and I went out onto the back porch.
Aunt Jenna found me there.
She was holding a glass of wine. She had her hair up. She had the look on her face she had when she was about to say a thing she had been waiting to say.
"Cole."
"Aunt Jenna."
She had walked across the porch the careful way an aunt walks when she has been holding a thing inside of her allafternoon, and the porch is the first room of the night that is empty enough for it.
"I'm not going to make a thing of it."
"Okay."
