The Husband Hour(50)
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
Howard looked around the room like a trapped animal. “Beth, we need to either reset, or separate. But I’m not spending one more year like I’ve spent the past few.”
She knew she should have felt scared or upset that her husband was talking about leaving, but all she felt was a wave of anger. Then a thought exploded, a thought that maybe had been glimmering, a tiny spark, for weeks now.
“Did you lose our house on purpose?”
“Why would I do that?”
“I don’t know. To give yourself an excuse to leave.”
Howard put down the sports jacket he was holding and moved closer to Beth. He took one of her hands and squeezed it.
“I don’t want an excuse to leave. I want an excuse to stay.”
“Your children need you here this summer. Your grandson—”
“Let me rephrase that: I want an excuse to stay in this marriage.”
Beth pulled her hand away. She felt like she’d been slapped. What was he referring to? Their sex life? Okay, things had dwindled the past year or so. But they weren’t teenagers anymore. And the money problems didn’t help. Nor did their tension over the girls. Howard had never agreed with Beth about letting Lauren isolate herself at the shore, and he had also taken Stephanie’s wayward personal life very hard. But none of this was Beth’s fault!
“Well, maybe I don’t have one for you.”
Howard nodded. “Then I’m going back to Florida next week to stay with Bill and Lorraine.”
Was this how it ended? Thirty years, dismissed with a few words and a half-packed suitcase?
“That’s fine with me, Howard.”
But it wasn’t fine. None of this was fine. Lauren widowed; Stephanie a single mother. Her own marriage disintegrating at middle age. And yet she had no idea how to fix any of it.
The sign, aqua blue with white lettering, read YOU CAN SHAKE THE SAND FROM YOUR SHOES BUT IT NEVER LEAVES YOUR HEART. Matt staged it against a white wall, propped on a table that he kept under the sightline of the camera lens. Then he took another shot of the sign hanging on the wall.
“Which one do you like better?” he asked Henny, showing her the options on the digital screen of his camera.
“I think the hanging version,” she said. “This Etsy thing is complicated!”
“Getting the photos right is the most labor-intensive part,” he said. “Once we have them uploaded, the rest is easy. Did you decide on a name for the store?”
She had told him a few she was thinking of, including Hung by Henny. He had to gently point out the potential sexual connotations with that one; she didn’t believe him until she Googled the old HBO show Hung.
“What do you think of Hen House Designs?” she said.
“I like it.”
“I really appreciate your help with this. I hope you’ll take me up on the offer to stay here a few nights free of charge.”
“Henny, I think I will.”
Ethan turned the page impatiently.
“Do we need to refresh where we were?” Lauren asked.
“No. I remember,” he said, yawning.
“Uh-oh. Are you going to make it through a whole chapter?”
“Two chapters,” he said.
She laughed. “That might be a little ambitious. I don’t know if I can stay awake through two chapters.”
“But it’s a good book!” he said, outraged.
“True.” She smiled, realizing she enjoyed reading the book aloud to him more than she’d enjoyed reading it herself. Ethan, nestled against her on his bed, radiated heat.
She read slowly, trying to do a decent job with the voices to make it lively. Feeling herself perspire, she turned the page and reached for his bedside fan. “Hey, are you hot?” she asked. No response. Slowly, making as little movement as possible, she closed the book, easing Ethan’s back against his pillow. He barely stirred. She kissed him on the top of the head and pulled his light summer quilt up to his shoulders, careful not to upset the meticulous arrangement of stuffed animals on the far side of the bed.
Ethan was neat for a six-year-old, maybe with a touch of OCD. She had been that way as a kid too, always needing to line up her dolls in a certain way before she could fall asleep.
She crossed the room to the bookshelf, where Ethan liked her to put Harry Potter back between Shark vs. Train and Dinotrux. Stephanie had brought a lot of books for the summer. Lauren hadn’t looked through them all but thinking about her old doll collection made her nostalgic. She wondered if Ethan’s book collection included any of her old favorites, like Where the Sidewalk Ends or Where the Wild Things Are. She scanned the spines, and a familiar title jumped out at her: Lights in the Dark: A Practical Guide to Viewing the Universe.
Hands trembling, Lauren pulled it off the shelf. It was clearly a new book, but the cover was the same as the one she’d given another boy to put on his bookshelf.
How strange. Just that morning she’d been telling Matt about Rory’s interest in astronomy. It had felt good to talk about the high-school stuff, to say things aloud that had begun to feel like they’d happened in another lifetime. Sometimes she felt oddly burdened, as if Rory lived on only in her memory—the real Rory, not the icon the press and the public made him into. For the one hour she spent talking to Matt, that burden had lifted.