A Life Beyond Us novel · Chapter 3 of 24

Chapter 3: The Other Half

In the kitchen Tom and Hugh tell what really happened that night, and Hugh admits he has loved Maura since fourth grade and Tom has always known.

I made coffee because my hands needed a job.

Tom sat at the kitchen table in his good jacket.

Hugh stayed standing by the back door.

Nobody had turned on the overhead light, so the only glow came from the stove clock and the lamp over the sink.

"Sit down, Hugh," I said.

"I'm fine here."

"You've been fine there for three years. Sit."

He pulled out the chair farthest from me and sat.

I set a mug in front of each of them, and then I sat down across from Tom.

"Tell it," I said.

Tom put both palms flat on the table.

"Darcy took her dress off and stood between the beds in her underwear. She said she wanted to cheer us up."

"She said that," Hugh agreed. His voice was low and rough from disuse. "In exactly those words."

"Then she sat on my lap and kissed me."

My stomach turned over.

"I kissed her back for about two seconds," Tom said. "I'm telling you because it's true, and because I'm done leaving things out."

"Two seconds," I said.

"Then I pulled away and said I couldn't. She laughed and went over to Hugh."

I looked at Hugh.

He was staring into his coffee.

"I told her to put her dress back on," he said. "She tried again. I stood up and opened the door, and she shut it and put her back against it."

"What did you do?"

"I asked her very politely to move."

"And she moved?"

"Eventually. She called us boring and some other things. Then she took the room key and left us there."

"What time was that?"

"A little after one in the morning," Tom said. "The desk clerk can tell you she checked out at ten past one. We stayed until morning and slept in our clothes."

I wrapped my hands around the mug.

I believed him, which surprised me.

It was the plain way he said it, with none of the little lifts at the end of a sentence that a man puts on when he's selling something.

But believing him didn't make the roof any easier.

"Six years," I said. "And you never told me. Not once, not during the second proposal, not on our wedding night."

"I was ashamed."

"Of what? You said no."

"Of the two seconds. Of crying in a motel. Of how I looked that night." He swallowed. "And of something I said to her."

Hugh set his mug down very gently.

"Tom," he said.

"No. She's going to tell it eventually, and it should come from us."

Tom turned toward me and made himself look at my face.

"Darcy asked why a man would be crying over a woman who wasn't worth it. I told her you were worth everything. I told her I'd never given you what you wanted, because you never asked, and I didn't know how to find it without being asked."

My face went hot.

That was what Darcy had twisted into a joke about towels.

"That's it?" I said.

"That's the first half."

"And the second half?"

Tom looked at Hugh.

Hugh looked at the table.

"Say it, or I'll say it for you," Tom said.

"Don't."

"Hugh."

"I'm not saying it in her kitchen at midnight after Darcy Hawthorne dragged us both onto a roof."

"Then say it tomorrow in daylight. But say it."

I looked from one of them to the other.

I had known these two men since we were eight years old.

I knew how they sat, and how they argued, and which one of them cracked his knuckles when he was lying.

Neither of them was cracking his knuckles.

"What did Tom say about you to Darcy?" I asked Hugh.

"Maura."

"I asked a question."

He lifted his head, and in the lamplight his eyes were very tired and very blue.

"That I've been in love with you since fourth grade," he said. "And he told her that I left Ashford because of it."

The coffee machine ticked as it cooled.

"That part was true," Hugh said. "Every word. I'm sorry."

Tom reached across the table and, without looking at me, laid his hand over the back of mine.

"I've known longer than you have," he said.

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