Learning to Be Her Husband

Their first appointment together was with Owen.

He put the separation folder on the table and asked one question.

"Are we stopping this?"

"Yes," Clara said.

"Yes," Damian said at exactly the same time.

Owen removed his glasses.

"Wonderful. I may sleep this week."

They signed the instructions to halt the unfinished proceedings. Certified marriage records arrived three days later, absurdly crisp for a marriage that had spent so long getting battered.

Clara put them somewhere dry and told Damian where.

He repeated the location back to her.

"Good," she said. "Now we both know."

"You make it sound revolutionary."

"For us? It is."

He laughed.

***

They returned to the lakeside house.

This time Clara chose the furniture.

She kept the dining table, moved two enormous chairs into Damian's study, and replaced the sofa with one they could sit on without feeling they were waiting to see a bank manager.

He wanted to throw out everything she'd disliked.

"The table's good," she said.

"Then it stays."

She brought home pale blue cushions.

He recognized the fabric from the showroom and said nothing until she caught him touching one.

"I liked it then," she admitted.

"You could have said."

"I know."

He put the cushion down with unnecessary care.

That evening she sat beside him while he went over a construction estimate. He explained the transport costs and why a cheaper bid could become the expensive one after a wet winter.

She listened.

The next morning he went with her to the university library.

He listened too.

***

She caught him studying a course catalog at breakfast.

"What are you looking at?"

"Business finance."

"For the company?"

"For me."

She set down her coffee.

He kept his eyes on the page.

"Don't make a thing of it."

"I wasn't going to."

"You look as though you are."

She leaned across and kissed him.

"Now I'm finished."

He looked suspiciously pleased.

Owen arranged for managers to take more responsibility in Briarhaven. Vince began making extravagant claims about learning to cook properly in France, though nobody had yet decided the family was going to France.

Clara applied to several programs, Cambridge among them. Whitmore's offer at home stayed on the list.

Every time she sent something, she told Damian.

Sometimes he asked questions she hadn't considered.

Sometimes he only said, "Show me."

***

The yellow hotel dog came to live with them after one puppy found a home and the other two proved impossible to separate from their mother.

Damian said they needed somebody to watch the garden.

Clara pointed out that the dogs spent most of the day asleep.

"Resting between patrols."

"Of course."

He fed them anyway.

On a cool morning in October, she found him at the stove wearing the pink apron over a T-shirt, frowning at an egg that had broken in the pan.

"That one's mine," he said.

"I don't mind a broken yolk."

"I do."

He made her another.

The coffee was exactly how she liked it. Hot, no sugar, enough fresh milk to soften it without making it taste of nothing.

She took a sip.

"You've been practicing."

"I can read the machine."

"I meant the coffee."

"That too."

"Did you read the instructions?"

"Some of them."

"The rest?"

"Trial and error."

He put the pan in the sink before she could investigate the results.

She carried her cup out to the terrace, and he followed with the plates. This time he set his own opposite hers, then moved it beside her without being asked.

She opened an email on her phone.

"They want an interview."

His fork stopped.

"Which one?"

"Cambridge. In November. It doesn't mean I'm in."

"It means they want to meet you."

She looked at him.

"Yes."

"Then we'll go."

The ease of the answer startled her.

He saw it and smiled a little.

"I can learn."

She reached beneath the table for his hand.

They sat like that while their breakfast cooled, the email open between them and the lake moving quietly beyond the garden.

For the first time, an invitation to leave somewhere felt like something she could bring home.

She looked him up and down.

"The apron suits you."

He turned slowly.

"Take it back."

"Never."

She ran before he reached her, laughing all the way upstairs. He followed with her slippers in one hand, insisting that he was only trying to keep her from getting cold feet.

She shut the bedroom door.

"Very thoughtful. Leave them outside."

"Open the door."

"I have an exhibition to get ready for."

"I could help."

"That's what I'm afraid of."

He stood outside for another minute, smiling at the wood like a fool.

***

At the gallery, Clara stopped in front of a painting of a river town after rain.

Damian recognized water, roofs, and trees. He couldn't have explained what made the picture different from any other arrangement of the same things.

Beside him, her eyes filled.

He looked from her to the painting.

"Who does it remind you of?"

She turned, surprised.

"My mother."

He waited.

"Not because she painted. Because of the window. We had one like that. I used to sit there while she brushed my hair."

He looked again.

The little square of yellow hadn't meant anything to him before.

Now it did.

"I don't know much about this," he said.

She took his hand.

"You don't have to know what I know."

"I want to know some of it."

So she told him about the artist, the village, the years between the early pictures and the later ones. He asked why the bridge looked unfinished. She moved a little closer so she could show him without speaking above a whisper. She showed him where the eye completed the line.

They stood there longer than he would once have believed possible.

At dinner, he mentioned the painting again.

She realized he had remembered.

***

They went to concerts, sometimes understanding less than they hoped, sometimes liking something without knowing why.

Once he recognized a nursery melody in a set of variations and leaned toward her with such triumph that she had to hide her laugh behind the program.

She let him have his victory.

Walking back along the river afterward, she spoke about the little pieces of her parents she could still remember.

A hand against her forehead. Her father's coat hanging by the door. The smell of yarn from a basket beneath the window.

"I'm forgetting their voices," she said.

He opened his coat and drew her against him.

"Tell me the other things."

She did.

He didn't offer to replace anybody. He stood in the cold and listened until she finished.

***

In November, they returned to Briarhaven to prepare for an overseas interview.

There was another reason Damian needed to go.

Owen had recovered the photographs from Clara's damaged camera. Vince had identified the gray figure beneath the pavilion.

Martin Bennett.

Dylan had admitted cutting the bridge. He still denied Shelby knew what he intended, but he had named the man waiting on the other side of the hill.

Damian read the statement twice.

"Where is Martin?"

"We found him," Vince said.

There had been a confrontation, a short pursuit, and enough unfinished business that the men were being held in a disused service area until Damian returned and Nathan could take over.

Damian's expression darkened at the delay.

"No more private arrangements," he said. "Nathan gets the statement. Both men. Everything."

Vince looked unhappy but nodded.

Beneath the hotel, they passed through the old gambling rooms left by a previous owner. Dust covered the tables and the disconnected machines.

"Could have made money here," Vince muttered.

Damian looked at him.

"We make money upstairs."

"I know."

"Then stop looking backward."

At the far door, he paused.

Beyond it, Martin began calling his niece's name.