Page 166 of Dream House
You’d warm her with your body at night in the winter. Bathe her in the creek on hot afternoons in the summer. Brace her in a squat as she pushed your babies into the world.
Give your life for her and them if it came to it.
Your lives might be short. But, surely, they’d be simple.
There’d be no room for misunderstanding. No doubt in her mind that you loved her with all of your wild, Archaic heart.
The only rules you had to follow were the ones that kept you alive. No dogma to smother you. No laws to confuse you.
Just lives to be shared.
Movement in the sky catches my eye. A bald eagle draws me from my fantasy where I live with Stella in a prehistoric Eden.
I stretch out on my back on the packed clay and sandstone floor of the cave. It’s about as comfortable as bedding down at your local quarry, but I tuck my pack behind my head, rest my hands on my belly, and watch the eagle soar in his predatory circles.
Before long, my eyes grow heavy, and I shut them, again letting myself picture an Archaic Stella here by my side, envying an ancient me who knew just how to show his woman he loved her.
ChapterTwenty-Seven
STELLA
I don’t wantto admit it, but getting Lark’s text after my blow-up was a relief.
Correction: it was a relief only after I’d read hiswholetext. When I saw the words,If anyone should leave, it’s me,my heart hit the dirt. For a terrifying instant, I thought he was leaving for good. Not just for the day.
And I regretted everything.
But when I realized he was giving me space for the day, I was grateful. And not just because he said he’d be coming back. When I’d pulled away from the house, all I could imagine doing was going to a bar and ordering a shot of something amber colored and high octane.
But you can’t really do that at nine in the morning.
So I took my time. I pulled over, texted Pen for her coffee order, and went through the drive-thru at Johnston Street Java.
By the time I got home, Lark’s Jeep was gone, and Pen was waiting for me to spill.
So I spilled. And spilled some more.
And when she reassured me that Mercury was still in retrograde, but it would be coming out tomorrow, I decided that was my cue to get to work.
And I did. I ticked off my entire to-do list before it was time to pick up Maisy. And I only thought about Lark seven hundred eighty-three times and I only cried four times.
On the way home from Maisy’s preschool, we stop at Carpe Diem. What can I say? Me and my kid like gelato.
And maybe I’m stalling just in case Lark has returned to the house. I need to apologize for what I said. I want to apologize for what I said.
I’m just afraid to do it.
Maisy orders raspberry fudge and I get pistachio.
“C’mon. Let’s sit.”
Maisy side-eyes me. “Here? We’re not going home first?”
Usually, when we get an after school treat, we eat it on the way home or—if it’s something messy like ice cream or snow cones—we save it until we get back. Most of the time, I’m in too big a rush to get home and do the dinner-bathtime-nighttime routine.
Today, I’m not.
I shrug innocently. “Nah. Let’s eat it here. It’lll be fun.”
