The Hard Version of Staying novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: What Jude Knew

Hanna goes at Jude for his silence, then throws up in the breakfast room. Declan is on the porch: he knows she's pregnant.

"Last June," I said.

"The second Saturday," Jude said. "They came down to my slip to look at the skiffs, or that's what they told me. Joelle had her hand flat on his back."

"People put a hand on a back."

"She left it there for a long time, Hanna."

The thermos was still hot against my palms.

At the bottom of the drive Declan's headlights shone on the gravel.

"You watched me kiss him in this driveway for five months," I said.

"I did."

"You fixed my gutters. You brought us a bluefish. You stood in my kitchen and ate Frances's pie."

"I did that too."

My voice was shaking now, and I let it.

"Why didn't you say anything?"

He did not look away from me.

"I told myself I might have it wrong," he said. "You'd just finished the blue room, and you were happy. You walked around that whole week like the house was finally done. I had no proof, only a hand on a back. I decided it wasn't mine to say."

"And now?"

"Now it was mine to say, and I said it too late."

I wanted him to defend himself, so I could be angrier.

He did not.

I handed the thermos back to him, because I did not trust myself to hold it.

"I don't want your coffee," I said. "Go home, Jude."

He took it and nodded.

Then he walked back across the lawn, and the flashlight beam got smaller until the fence swallowed it.

I did not sleep.

At five I came down to the kitchen and found the light already on.

Frances was cutting up fruit, and the ovens were warm.

"Joelle didn't come," she said. "I've started the biscuits myself. They won't be as good."

"They'll be fine."

I tied on my apron and cracked a dozen eggs into the big steel bowl.

The smell of raw egg rose up and hit me in the stomach.

I put the bowl down, said "Excuse me," and walked quickly into the pantry.

I was sick in the little sink beside the flour bins, quietly, with the door pulled shut.

When I came out Frances was standing there with a glass of water and a damp cloth.

She did not say anything until I had rinsed my mouth.

"How far along?" she asked.

"Frances."

"Your mother did exactly that every morning with you. She couldn't stand the smell of eggs or coffee until the fourth month." She pushed the glass into my hand. "How far?"

I thought of lying, and then I was too tired to.

"About six weeks. I took three tests yesterday. I was going to tell him last night."

"And now?"

"Now I don't want him to know."

Frances took off her reading glasses and looked at me for a long moment.

"Good," she said. "Then nobody tells him. Not Jude, not me, not the girl at the pharmacy. You eat something dry and I'll scramble the eggs."

I took the crackers she gave me.

For the first time in two days, I almost laughed.

The Ohio couple came down at eight, and I served them bacon and the last of the apple butter with a steady hand.

They told me the blue room was the nicest they had ever slept in.

I thanked them.

At half past nine, with the dishes done, I carried the trash out to the porch.

Declan was sitting on the top step.

He had shaved, and he was wearing a clean shirt, and he had changed the tulips for a bouquet of white roses wrapped in paper.

He stood up as soon as he saw me.

I looked past him, down the drive.

His car was gone.

It was parked, I realized, behind the old shed, where I couldn't see it from the kitchen windows.

He had been waiting here a while.

"I'm not here to fight," he said. "I slept in the car. I thought about what you said, and you were right about some of it. I handled it badly."

"You handled it exactly as you meant to."

"Han."

"You can leave the flowers on the step."

He did not leave the flowers.

He reached into the paper and drew out a small gray stuffed rabbit, no bigger than his hand.

I stared at it.

Its ears were soft, and one of them had a little tag.

"I know, Han," he said, and his voice cracked in a way I had heard it crack many times when he wanted something.

"You know what?"

"The tests and the prenatal vitamins came through on our card. I saw the charges on Tuesday and put it together."

He smiled at me, and it was the warmest smile I had ever seen on his face.

"Congratulations," my husband said. "I'm going to be a father."

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