My Name in Her Mouth

Three weeks later, I left a meeting because I had promised to look at a snail.

Julian caught me in the hall.

“Tell me that isn’t why you’re leaving.”

“I said five o’clock.”

“The man in there flew from Boston.”

“He can wait ten minutes. The snail may not.”

Julian stared at me, then started laughing.

The snail was asleep beneath a leaf by the time I reached the garden. Zoe crouched beside it in yellow rain boots, holding a much smaller leaf over its shell.

“He has an umbrella,” she told me.

“Very thoughtful.”

“You’re late.”

I checked my watch. Five-oh-three.

“I am.”

She considered whether to forgive me, then moved aside so I could crouch beside her.

Hannah stood by the terrace with two mugs in her hands. The evening wind lifted loose strands of hair around her face. She had returned to work part-time the previous week, taking the slower household inventory tasks while Mrs. Bell insisted on overseeing her recovery.

We had extended the written accommodation agreement while she recovered, without changing its conditions. There was no approaching deadline for Zoe to fear.

I had seen her every day. I had begun arranging my days so that I would.

“You didn’t have to come out of a meeting,” she said when Zoe went to fetch another leaf.

“She invited me.”

“She also invited the gardener’s wheelbarrow.”

“I assume it was punctual.”

She handed me a mug, smiling.

It was coffee the way I drank it. No sugar. A little milk. I had never told her.

Before I could ask, she said, “You leave the cup in the study every morning. I notice things when I clean.”

“You shouldn’t be cleaning my study.”

“I’m back at work.”

“I meant because the west wing still smells of paint.”

She gave me a look that suggested she knew exactly how much of that answer to believe.

That evening I read Zoe her book while Hannah folded a small mountain of laundry. The rabbit’s boots were no longer missing; apparently we had graduated to a duck who refused to go to bed.

Zoe objected to the duck’s decision but supported it in principle.

When she finally fell asleep, her cheek rested against my shoulder. Hannah reached to take her.

“I can carry her.”

“I know. But I’ve been waiting all day for a cuddle.”

I gave her the child.

She settled Zoe in bed, tucked the bear under one arm, and stayed until the small hand on her sleeve opened.

I watched from the doorway. There was something unbearably intimate about her turning off the lamp with the side of her wrist so the bed wouldn’t move.

When she came out, I stepped back.

“Coffee?” I asked.

“If I have any more, I’ll be awake until breakfast.”

“Tea?”

She studied me.

“Are you asking because you want tea?”

“No.”

The corner of her mouth lifted.

“Then tea would be lovely.”

We sat in the small room adjoining the apartment, close enough to hear Zoe if she woke. Hannah curled her legs beneath her on the couch. I took the armchair opposite and immediately regretted the distance.

She told me about the hotel: broken vacuum cleaners, guests who wanted towels delivered before they had finished asking, the manager who had let her bring Zoe into the office when childcare fell through.

“Not everyone was awful,” she said. “People helped when they could.”

“Where was her father?”

She turned her cup slowly.

“He left before she was born. He made it clear he didn’t want to be involved. I decided I’d rather build a life around what was actually there.”

I wanted to say several things about him. None would help her.

“Was your mother there?”

“At the hospital? Yes. She cried more than Zoe.” Hannah smiled, then looked down. “I miss calling her when something funny happens.”

I knew that kind of absence. The thought arriving before the memory corrected it.

“My mother would have liked you,” I said.

“You can’t know that.”

“No. But she would have liked hearing somebody tell me I was wrong.”

Hannah laughed softly.

Then the silence changed.

She set down her cup.

“Mr. Romano, I need to ask you something.”

I disliked the return of the title more than I should have.

“Ask.”

“Do you come up here because of Zoe?”

“Yes.”

Her eyes dropped for an instant.

“And because of you,” I added.

She looked up again.

I leaned forward, forearms on my knees.

“I think about you when I’m not here. I look for you when I come home. I’ve been trying to find an acceptable way to say that without sounding like a man who signs your paycheck.”

“That part doesn’t disappear because you say it nicely.”

“I know.”

“Do you?”

I sat with the question.

“I can’t ask you for an answer while you’re worrying that the wrong one could cost you your room.”

“No,” she said. “You can’t.”

I took a breath and leaned back.

“All right.”

“But I can tell you what I want.”

I went still.

Hannah stood and crossed the small space between us. She stopped beside my chair, close enough that my knee brushed her skirt.

“I want you to stop looking at me as if you’ve already decided you shouldn’t.”

“I’m trying to behave.”

“I noticed.”

She touched my jaw. Her fingers were warm and slightly unsteady.

“Dante.”

My name sounded different in her mouth. I reached for her hand and held it against my cheek.

“If I kiss you, will you be sorry tomorrow?”

“I’ll be sorry tonight if you keep making me do all the work.”

I stood slowly. She tipped her face up.

The first kiss was careful. The second wasn’t. Her hand closed in my shirt, and I pulled her closer, feeling the solid, living warmth of her against me.

She tasted of tea. She made a small sound when my hand moved to her waist, and I had to remind myself that there was a sleeping child ten feet away.

I rested my forehead against hers.

“I’ve wanted to do that for weeks.”

“I know,” she whispered.

“Was I that obvious?”

“You offered to inspect a shelf I’d already dusted.”

“It looked structurally unsound.”

She laughed against my mouth.

Then she drew back just enough to look at me.

“I want this. But Zoe is getting attached to you, too. We have to be careful with her.”

I brushed a curl away from her cheek.

“We will.”

“And you’ll have to take me somewhere that isn’t my workplace.”

“That can be arranged.”

“Ask me properly.”

I smiled before I could stop myself.

“Hannah, will you have dinner with me?”

“Yes,” she said. “I would like that.”