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She didn’t argue this time, just sighed and shook her head.
“You’re not sure?” I teased.
“I’m not sure about anything.”
“You’d have so much more space,” I pointed out again. “And I’d be there to take care of you. All the time.”
“Choosing to live together shouldn’t be something we do out of convenience,” she said. “And this situation is decidedlynot romantic. I’ve never lived with anyone. I want that choice to be well-thought-out. A clear next step in the relationship.”
I knelt at her side. “You just described where we are.”
She stared at me, exhaustion in the tiny lines at the edges of her mouth, her eyes.
“What if we made it temporary—just so that you and the baby aren’t alone at first? So you’ll have me there to help? And then, later, when things settle down, we can really decide.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“We’ll keep the apartment. Just in case.”
“In case . . . ?”
I shook my head. “Of whatever.”
“I don’t have the energy to move now, Oliver.” Her voice was a sigh. She’d been having near-constant contractions, which the doctor had said was basically her body practicing for the real thing.
“You won’t lift a finger,” I told her, my heart lifting. It was crazy. When I’d first met Holland, having her anywhere—having her literally, being inside her, possessing her—had been all I could think about. Now, having Holland and the baby at my house was all I wanted in the world—to have her laughter, and the sounds of my son, in that quiet house. I still wanted her with a ferocious lust I found hard to control, but I wanted so much more than that now. I was eager to fill my big quiet house with new memories, a new family. I knew Sonja and Adam would have wanted that, too.
That afternoon I drove Holland with a few bags of her personal things to the house. The movers were alreadypacking up the apartment, and had promised to have the spare room in my house set up for the baby by the following day.
“It’s nice to be back here,” Holland said, walking slowly down the hallway toward my room. She turned to look into the spare room, the one I’d planned as the nursery, and I stepped up close behind her.
“Do you like it?”
Holland said nothing, but her shoulders shook, and when she turned to look at me, tears ran down her cheeks. “When did you do this?” she asked.
The room was painted with a jungle scene, the walls full of tropical trees and plants with jungle animals peeking out between fronds and under branches. “A couple weeks ago,” I said. “I hired a local artist who promised she did great monkeys.” The monkeys were pretty kick-ass, swinging from the upper limbs around the room.
“But we weren’t even . . .”
We weren’t together. We weren’t even speaking. “I hoped.” I admitted. “I knew I would try for as long as it took to get you back, to be part of my son’s life.” It was easy to tell her this, and even I was surprised to feel my ego stay where it was, relaxed and willing to show my weaknesses.
Holland looked around the room again, stepping inside. “Where are all your clothes?” she asked.
For a long time, I’d hung rolling racks in this room because I hadn’t wanted to face my parents’ old bedroom. But slowly, over time, I’d been going through thingsin there, sorting through the things they’d left behind. “They’re in the master bedroom,” I told her.
Her eyebrows rose, and a smile crossed her lips. “Was that hard?” she whispered, a hand finding my cheek.
I closed my eyes and let myself lean into her palm. “Yes and no.”
We walked together across the hall, and Holland looked around the spacious master bedroom. My clothes still hung on the rolling racks in the center of the room. “I haven’t managed to get through both closets yet,” I told her. “I’ll finish it today. We can sleep in here soon.”
“When you’re ready.” Holland put her arms around me, leaning her head into my chest. I inhaled her, the sweet cinnamon scent of her hair, the underlying freshness of her skin. “I’m proud of you,” she whispered. She pulled back, squinting for a split second and dropping a hand to her stomach. “I might rest for a bit,” she said, her voice making it sound like an apology.
“You should,” I said, and I walked her back to my old bedroom. “I’ll finish the closet while you sleep.” I wanted to share that big light-filled master bedroom with Holland, to give her a beautiful place to call her own. My old high school bedroom wasn’t exactly the kind of place a new mother would find relaxing.
When Holland was settled, I went back to the master, turning on the light in the closet and stepping in gingerly. It was like entering a museum or a library, a quiet hush in the air and the scent of my mother’s perfume lingering on her clothes.I stood in the center of the walk-in, letting the smell envelop me, taking me back to my childhood. That scent brought back so many memories: the sound of my mother’s heels clicking in the entry as she and my father got ready to go out for the evening, her arms going around me as she kissed me goodbye and gave the babysitter careful instructions. It made me think of being in the car with her when I was a child, running errands or being picked up from school. I saw the three of us, together on this big bed watching movies when I was in elementary school. Being among their things, with the scent of my mother surrounding me, it was hard to believe they were gone.
I shook my head to clear it and began sorting the clothing into piles to donate. It was an arduous task, my heart threatening to shred with every memory that came along with touching their things. But over the course of an hour, the closet began to empty. I was getting ready to take a break when I noticed something. A shoe box had been tucked away beneath my mother’s coats, pushed to the back of the closet on a shelf. I reached in and pulled it out, the light weight of whatever rattled in the box making me certain this was not a forgotten pair of shoes.
