When Darkness Falls(22)

Except he’d come back.

“Haley?”

“Yes?”

Her voice sounded numb, too. What was that song lyric? Comfortably numb. She didn’t mind this. It felt better than pain. Better than considering how she’d raced from one relationship to the next, upping the ante by getting married rather than taking a break and getting herself together. Rather than taking time to really get to know someone.

She didn’t turn her head to look at Devon, but Haley was aware of movement from the corner of her eye. The springs screeched as he sat on the bed. They ought to get a new mattress, she thought. They couldn’t really afford it, but a good mattress was important for a good night’s sleep. She’d read that.

“Are you okay?” Devon said.

“You said you had to be at The Underground.”

“I don’t. I guess you know that.”

“So why come back?” The words came out automatically. Haley didn’t think them first, they just came out. And she still didn’t look at him, only at the window. Her hair looked nice, she thought, examining her reflection in the glass. The curls had pulled out long and loose today, as she liked them. Because she’d spent the time on spraying, and drying, and combing. If you wanted something to look good, you had to take the time. “You’re been avoiding me for weeks, why stop now?”

“I’m not avoiding you.”

Finally, Haley shifted sideways to face him. “You go to bed after me, even if we’re both home. You don’t get up when I leave for work. We don’t talk. We don’t make love.”

Inside, a tiny voice yelled that this could not end anywhere good, that maybe she ought to back off, give him space, and let him work out whatever he needed to and get back to her. The men-are-from-another-world theory of relationships. She’d been so concerned she’d actually bought a decades-old book on relationships in a used bookstore. The book claimed men and women were as different as if they were from separate planets. After reading how men needed to stay in their caves and women ought to solve problems by going on shopping binges instead of trying to talk, she’d thrown the book in a public trashcan.

The next day, though, she’d been stricken by the thought that the author was right. After all, there was a whole industry based on the supposed extreme differences between women and men. And she was teetering on the edge of her second failed relationship. Maybe she was the one who was crazy.

“I’ve been busy,” Devon said. “And I know you’re angry about it, so I’ve been avoiding you.”

“Oh, no.” Haley threw the book on the floor and faced Devon. Different planets be damned. “That is not what’s going on. And it’s not about Brian. I thought about it, and I probably shouldn’t mention him so much to you, but that’s not what this is.”

“Fine. What’s it about, then?”

“Us.” Certainty edged her anger. She was going to have to say it for him. He would avoid, avoid, avoid, so she would have to do it. She unbent, put her feet on the ground. “Us,” she said. “And you.” She stood face-to-face with him. The foot or so between them felt as wide as a football field. “You don’t want to be with me anymore. You wish we hadn’t gotten married.”

It was almost a relief to have the words out there in the open. Was this how prisoners felt when they were finally sentenced? Horror and relief.

“Oh, Jesus.” Devon’s face crumpled, his shoulders sagged. He reached toward her. “I never meant you to think that.”

“If it’s true, it’s true,” she said.

He seized her hands, pulled her to sit with him on the bed. “It’s not. It was never that. Jesus. I’m such an idiot. I love you. I love being married to you.”

Her insides remained chilled. Brian had been good with words, too. Brian, always Brian. “But?”

Devon took a deep breath. Suddenly, Haley wanted to take the whole conversation back. She didn’t want to know, didn’t want it to be the end, despite that, in the long run, it might mean a more honest life.

“Something’s wrong with me,” Devon said. “That night you came home early, when you asked the next morning where I’d been, I couldn’t tell you. Because I didn’t know.”

Her mind had trouble catching up with her ears. She’d been expecting him to say he’d been out, that he’d met someone else. “Didn’t know what?”

“Didn’t know I’d been out. I was asleep, and I remember getting up to get a drink of water, and then you were there. I don’t remember going out.”

“You were sleepwalking? That’s what this is about?” She didn’t know whether to be relieved or to brain him over the head with a large object. He’d caused all this trouble in their marriage over sleepwalking.

“Sleepwalking?” he said.

“You never thought of that?”

He shook his head. “Never.”

“What else could it be?”

“But I went outside,” Devon said. “For an hour or more.”

“One of my little cousins used to sleepwalk and go outside. She stayed at our house once and, in the middle of the night, went down the stairs, out the door, around the side yard, and rang the neighbor’s doorbell. They brought her back to us, my mother put her to bed, and in the morning she didn’t remember any of it.”