The Silence Between Us: A Vow to Return novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Terms

Nathan drives four and a half hours to her lake cottage at dawn, and she sets three rules; he says he can't tell her yet, and that his father won't allow it.

I got to the cottage at four in the morning and slept in my coat on top of my grandmother's quilt.

By seven there was a knock, and then the door opened without waiting for an answer.

"I brought a banana muffin and a whole lot of opinions," Molly said.

She dropped a paper bag on the kitchen table and looked me over.

"You drove four and a half hours in the dark because of a text."

"Because of a text and a dinner and a hand on my leg," I said.

"Whose hand?"

"My husband's."

"Okay, that one's allowed to be a hot take." Molly broke the muffin in half and gave me the bigger piece. "Tell me everything. Slowly. With the bad parts first."

I told her about the window table, and the chair on his left, and Kendra's warm squeeze on my shoulder.

Molly chewed, frowning.

"She sounds nice," she said. "That's what's weird."

"I know."

"Women who steal husbands are supposed to be rude about it."

"I know."

Gravel crunched in the driveway.

We both looked out the window.

Nathan's gray sedan stopped behind my car, and he sat behind the wheel for a long moment with both hands on it.

He got out in the same shirt he'd worn to the restaurant.

"Well," Molly said, standing, "he drove all night. I'll give him that."

She picked up the bag and held it against her chest.

"The muffin is for Hannah," she told him at the screen door. "You can have the smell."

She went out and down the porch steps, and a minute later her truck started.

Nathan stayed on the porch.

He looked tired in a way I hadn't let myself notice for months.

There were lines at the corners of his mouth that hadn't been there at Christmas.

"Can I come in?" he asked.

"You can sit on the porch step," I said. "I'll bring you coffee."

I poured two mugs and came out and sat on the swing, a full arm's length from where he sat.

The lake was flat and gray, and a loon called twice out past the dock.

"Here are my rules," I said.

He nodded.

"One. No lies. If you can't tell me something, you say 'I can't tell you.' You don't invent a term sheet."

"There is a term sheet."

"Then you can say it's real and it's not the whole story."

His jaw moved.

"It's real," he said. "It's not the whole story."

"Two. You don't put a hand on me to win an argument. Not under a table, not on my back, not on my face."

His eyes dropped to the porch boards.

"Okay," he said, quietly.

"Three. You come to me. I don't chase you, I don't check your phone, and I don't spend another year smiling at people who are being kind to me on purpose."

"Hannah." He looked up. "I haven't been unfaithful to you."

I believed him, and it didn't help at all.

"That's not what I asked," I said.

"What are you asking?"

"Why did you look at her like that?"

He frowned. "Like what?"

"Like you could breathe."

He sat there with the mug in both hands, and I watched him decide not to lie.

"Because with her I don't have to carry it," he said at last. "Alone."

"Carry what?"

"I can't tell you."

"Say that again."

"I can't tell you, Han. I'm sorry. It isn't mine to tell yet."

The swing creaked under me.

I had waited seven years to hear him say something that made me feel his weight, and this was it.

It was unbearable that it told me nothing.

"Nathan, I'm going to ask you once and I want it to be an actual question." I put my mug down on the rail. "Is there a person alive who has told you not to tell me?"

The loon called again.

He looked at the lake.

Then he looked at me, and his voice was very low.

"My father," he said.

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