Who Are You Waiting For?

The power went out during a thunderstorm, and Rico said something so filthy that I laughed before I could stop myself.

We were in the pantry. I had been looking for crackers. He had been pretending he hadn't followed me there.

"It's a house full of security systems," I said into the dark. "Shouldn't one of them know how to manage electricity?"

"The generator is starting."

"You sound personally betrayed."

"I paid a great deal to avoid standing in cupboards."

His hand found my elbow when thunder shook the windows.

I didn't pull away.

A light came on above the doorway. We stood much closer than I had realized.

Rico looked at my mouth.

I stopped finding anything funny.

For the past week, he had been everywhere without quite being near enough. At breakfast, taking the burnt toast I pretended I preferred. Beside Leo's bed, his voice roughening over the same badly written dinosaur story. In the hallway after midnight, asking whether my headache had eased.

I knew the shape of his hands. I knew he loosened his watch before he got on the floor with our son. I knew he never went to bed until he had checked that both our doors were closed.

I didn't know what to do with how much I wanted him.

He lifted his free hand toward my face.

Then Leo called out upstairs.

Rico stepped back immediately.

We found our son sitting upright, both fists in his blanket.

"The house went away," he whispered.

"Only the lights," Rico said, sitting on the bed. "The house is still here."

I climbed in on the other side. Leo crawled between us and put one hand on each of our wrists.

We stayed until his breathing steadied.

At some point my head tipped against Rico's shoulder. His cheek rested on my hair, so lightly that I could have mistaken it for an accident.

I didn't move.

When we finally left, there was a red crease across his forearm where Leo had held on.

"He'll be tired tomorrow," I said.

"We can move his appointment."

"We can ask Naomi."

He glanced at me.

"I'm learning," he said.

In the hall outside my room, I reached up and smoothed the fold in his collar.

The gesture stopped both of us.

His hand closed around mine, warm and careful.

"You used to do that," he murmured.

There it was again.

The other woman. The woman who was me, who knew where to stand and what to say. Who didn't have to wonder whether she was borrowing someone else's husband.

I withdrew my hand.

Rico let it fall.

"What happened?"

"I don't know which of us you're looking at."

He was silent.

I hated myself for asking, and hated the silence more.

"When you look at me, are you waiting for her to come back?"

"Clara."

"Please answer me. I can take an answer I don't like. I can't take being a place you wait."

His face changed.

"At first," he said.

I nodded once. It hurt exactly as much as I had expected.

"I heard your voice in the restaurant, and then I saw your face. I thought if I could get you close enough, everything would go back where it belonged."

He looked toward the stairs.

"Then you told me my coffee tasted like punishment. You argued with me in my own kitchen. You went back to work for one shift because Rosa was short-handed, and you came home with blisters because you refused the shoes I ordered."

"They cost eight hundred dollars."

"They're shoes, Clara. They don't have to make a moral argument."

I nearly smiled. He noticed.

"I know you're different," he said. "I don't always know how to get that right. But I don't spend breakfast waiting for you to become someone else. I spend it hoping you'll sit next to me."

I looked down at my hands.

"Were you always this good at saying things?"

"No. Ask anyone who worked for me before you came home."

He leaned against the opposite wall, giving me room to breathe.

"Elena and I weren't perfect. I won't sell you a marriage that never existed. We fought. I lied by leaving things out. You were tired of being told the ugly parts of my life weren't your concern when they affected everything you loved."

"Including Leo."

"Especially Leo."

"What did you do?"

He didn't pretend not to understand.

"I moved money and information for people who hurt other people. I owned legitimate businesses too. I told myself the difference mattered more than it did."

The house felt very quiet.

"Do you still?"

"Some things are being closed. Some are harder to leave than I want them to be. I won't tell you it's all gone because you need a comfortable answer."

I studied him. The danger hadn't disappeared because he could read a bedtime story. I had known that from the beginning.

"I don't want to fall in love with a man who keeps me ignorant so I'll stay."

His throat moved.

"Then I'll tell you what staying means. And I'll listen when you tell me what has to change."

It wasn't a promise that everything would be easy.

For once, that made me trust it more.

I crossed the space between us.

He straightened but didn't reach for me.

"I'm not remembering something," I told him.

His eyes held mine.

"All right."

"I need you to understand that."

"I do."

I put my hand against his jaw and kissed him.

For a heartbeat, he didn't move. Then his breath broke against my mouth, and his hand came to my waist.

He kissed me as though he had been standing outside in the cold for eighteen months and someone had finally let him in.

I caught his shirt. He made a low sound that went through me, and suddenly there was no room for the lost photographs, the other names, the years I couldn't reach.

Only his mouth. His hand at my back. The fact that I wanted him closer.

When we parted, his forehead rested against mine.

"Still all right?" he asked.

"If you ask that in the middle of every kiss, we're going to have a scheduling problem."

His laugh was quiet and astonished.

I kissed him again, because I could.

Then my phone vibrated in my pocket.

A message from Marcus.

I can explain. But not while he is listening.

Beneath it was a photograph of me in a hospital bed.

My eyes were open. My head was bandaged.

Marcus stood beside the bed, holding a little plastic bag.

Inside it was my wedding ring.