The Silence Between Us: A Vow to Return novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Window Table
Hannah walks into the restaurant from her first anniversary and finds Nathan with his colleague Kendra, takes her seat on his left, and walks out with a text that says to wait until the 14th.
Nathan's text came while the roast was still in the oven.
"Late night with Kendra. We have to close the Brightwater term sheet. Eat without me."
It was the fourth Thursday in a row.
I had set the table for two anyway, with the good napkins.
Kendra Shaw had been at every dinner Nathan missed since March.
She was twenty-nine, the best associate at his father's firm, and she had never once given me a reason to dislike her.
That was the part I couldn't get past.
She had sent a card after my book launch and she knew my coffee order.
She had driven me to the airport when Nathan got stuck in a meeting.
Yet in every room his family owned, the chair on Nathan's left was hers now, and people's eyes slid past me to find her sitting in it.
I turned off the oven and took my keys, because I needed to stop looking at that table.
The market for coffee beans is across the street from Lantern Room, where Nathan and I spent our first anniversary.
He had cried over the crème brûlée that night and hadn't cared who saw.
On my way back, I looked through the restaurant's front window.
Nathan was at the window table with a candle burning between him and Kendra.
There were two glasses of red wine, both half empty.
Kendra leaned in with her elbows on the tablecloth and her chin on her hand, laughing at something he'd said.
Nathan looked loose and easy.
He looked like the man I had married.
I stood on the sidewalk with a bag of coffee beans in my arms.
So I went in.
Kendra saw me first.
Her smile dropped and she sat up straight, pushing her wineglass away from her.
"Hannah, thank God," she said. "I told him to call you."
Nathan turned around.
For one second his face had nothing on it at all.
"Han," he said. "This isn't what it looks like. It's a working dinner."
"At Lantern Room," I said.
"Kendra needed somewhere quiet to think."
"It's true," Kendra said. She stood up fast and pulled her chair out for me. "Please, take my seat. I was about to go."
I looked at the chair.
It was the chair on his left, and it was mine.
"Thank you," I said, and I sat down in it.
Kendra tapped two fingers on the tablecloth while she watched me.
It was the same tap Harold made at every board dinner, and half the firm had picked it up from him.
Under the table, Nathan's hand landed on my thigh.
It was heavy, and it did not ask.
I lifted it off and set it on the tablecloth in front of both of us.
"Not under the table," I said.
Kendra looked down into her wine.
A waiter came by.
"The check for this table, please," I said. "All of it."
"Han, I've got it," Nathan said.
"I know you do." I handed the waiter my own card. "I'd still like to pay."
Kendra said she would leave us to it and picked up her blazer.
She squeezed my shoulder on the way past.
It was a warm squeeze, and I felt it for a long time after she was gone.
I walked home. Nathan came in forty minutes later, with his tie pulled loose.
I was standing at the kitchen counter with the good napkins still folded on the table behind me.
"Show me the term sheet," I said.
"It's on my laptop at the office."
"Then drive me there."
He rubbed his face with both hands.
"Hannah, I can't."
"You can't what?"
"I can't tell you." His voice broke on it. "Not yet. Please just trust me."
"For how long?"
He didn't answer.
I went into the bedroom and pulled the small suitcase down from the closet shelf.
"I'm going to Harbor Springs," I said from the doorway. "To the cottage."
"Han, don't."
"I'm not asking you to choose, Nathan. I'm asking you to tell me what's true. Until you do, I'm not sleeping here."
His phone rang on the nightstand.
He looked at the screen. "It's my father," he said. "I have to take this."
He went out onto the balcony and slid the door shut behind him.
I zipped the suitcase.
His phone lit up again on the nightstand, a text this time, and the preview was easy to read.
Kendra: "Your dad says wait until the 14th. Don't tell her anything yet. I'm here if you need me."
I did not wait for him to come back in.
I took my keys and my suitcase and went down to the car.
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