The Hard Version of Staying novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Bags on the Porch

Declan arrives with flowers and a story. Hanna puts his bags out in front of the guests, and the neighbor admits he saw them in June.

Frances was peeling potatoes at the kitchen table when I came in dripping, and she did not ask me a single question.

She put down the peeler, took my wet coat and handed me a dish towel.

"Sit," she said.

"I can't. I have to pack his things."

"Then I'll help you carry them."

Frances had been my mother's best friend for thirty years, and she had cooked in this kitchen since before it was mine.

She looked at the bare place on my left hand and nodded once.

"The big suitcase is in the attic," she said.

It took us forty minutes.

I packed his shirts, his work shoes and the cufflinks I had given him for our fifth anniversary.

I left the framed wedding photo on the dresser.

Frances watched me look at it, and then she took it out of the room and put it in the hall closet.

By six o'clock two suitcases and a duffel bag sat on the front porch under the lamp.

A couple from Ohio checked in at ten past, with matching raincoats and a bottle of wine for the room.

I gave them the key to the blue room and told them breakfast was at eight.

"What a beautiful house," the woman said. "It must have been a lot of work."

"Nine rooms," I said. "I did them one at a time."

Declan's headlights came up the drive a few minutes later.

He parked behind the porch, got out with a bunch of grocery-store tulips, and stopped when he saw his luggage.

I watched him through the screen door.

He stood there for a moment.

Then he fixed his face into the sad, steady one he uses when he delivers bad news to people whose roofs have fallen in.

I opened the door and stepped out, leaving it open behind me, so the Ohio couple in the front hall could hear.

"Han," he said. "Let me say my piece, and then you can decide."

"Say it here."

"I've been struggling since the last round," he said. "I didn't want to put it on you. You were so fragile, and I didn't want to make it worse. Joelle was someone to talk to. That's all it was, and I should have talked to you."

He held out the tulips.

I did not take them.

"You kissed her head," I said.

"She was crying."

"You sat on the same side of the booth."

"The booth was crowded."

"There were four empty tables," I said. "I counted."

He let the tulips down slowly.

"You're doing this because you're hurt," he said. "I understand that. But you'll regret it tomorrow."

"I won't."

"You haven't taken your capsule. Come inside, have your water and a quiet evening, and we'll sort this out when you're steady."

His voice was so gentle that the woman from Ohio, standing behind me, made a small sympathetic sound.

For a second, the part of me that always said yes wanted to say it again.

"Declan," I said, "your bags are by the door. The car is behind you. Go."

He stepped forward and put his hand on the doorframe.

Frances came out of the hall with a dish towel over her shoulder and stood in front of me.

She was a head shorter than he was.

"Evening, Declan," she said. "Your things are on the porch. Mind the step on your way down, it's slick."

"Frances, this is between my wife and me."

"Not tonight it isn't."

He looked at her, then at me, then past us both at the Ohio couple, who had found something very interesting to study on the stairs.

He picked up the suitcases and the duffel, one at a time, and loaded them into his trunk.

He set the tulips on the porch rail.

"I'll be at the bottom of the drive if you need me," he said. "I'm not going anywhere, Han."

He drove down the gravel to where the drive meets the road, and he parked there with his lights on.

I went inside and locked the door.

For an hour I served the guests tea and told them where to find the best chowder in town.

I smiled the whole time, and my face hurt afterward.

At nine I went out the back to bring in the trash cans, because I needed a reason to be outside.

The rain had stopped.

Declan's lights were still on at the end of the drive, and the shape of him sat behind the wheel without moving.

A man came across the lawn from the boatyard fence with a flashlight in one hand and a thermos in the other.

It was Jude Calhoun, who had owned the yard next door for as long as I had owned the inn.

He fixed my gutters when they came down and brought us fish in summer, and in six years we had probably said two hundred words to each other.

He stopped a few feet from me and held out the thermos.

"Coffee," he said. "Frances said you'd been on your feet since the diner."

"Everyone knows."

"The whole harbor knows."

I took the thermos.

It was hot through the metal, and I held it with both hands.

He looked down the drive at the car.

Then he looked at me, and I saw that he was not there to be kind.

"Hanna, I have to tell you something, and you won't like it," he said. "I saw them together at my slip, last June. I should have told you then."

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