Page 94
The Complication
She changed her sweater three times.
This was, she was aware, ridiculous. She was a grown woman. She had a teaching certificate and a retirement account and a car that made a noise she had learned to live with, and she was standing in her bedroom at five fifteen on a Friday evening holding a green sweater in one hand and a cream one in the other like the fate of the world depended on it.
It felt like it did.
She put on the green one. She took it off. She put on the cream one and looked at herself in the mirror and thought she looked like someone trying very hard not to look like she was trying, which was accurate, so she took it off and put the green one back on and left it there out of pure exhaustion.
Hair up. Hair down. Hair up.
She left it down. He had noticed it down once. She was almost sure he had noticed it down.
What do I do with my hands, she texted Lauren.
Lauren replied almost instantly. hold a wine glass like a normal person
What if I spill it
then he will fix it. it’s literally his whole thing
Lauren
you’re going to be fine. is the chicken in
The chicken was in. The chicken had been in since four forty, following instructions Lauren had sent that morning as a numbered list with the heading ALLISON PLEASE READ ALL OF IT FIRST. She had read all of it first. She had read it four times. She had cleaned the cottage twice, which was once more than it needed, and at one point she had stood in the living room with a dish towel over her shoulder looking at the couch where the storm had happened and felt her whole face go hot and had to go stand in the kitchen for a minute.
She was not okay.
She was the most okay she had been in years.
Both of those things were true, and they were fighting it out somewhere under her ribs, and she honestly did not know which one was winning.
* * *
She lit the candles at six thirty.
She looked at them. They looked like she was trying. She blew them out.
She stood in her dark kitchen with a little curl of smoke rising off each wick and thought, very clearly, you are acting like you are sixteen.
She relit them.
She was sixteen. She was also a grown woman with a mortgage on her heart and eight years of teaching behind her, and apparently those two people could stand in the same kitchen at the same time and both be completely beside themselves.
At six fifty-eight she heard his truck in the drive.
Two minutes early. Of course.
She checked her reflection in the microwave door, which was the only shiny surface in reach, and saw a slightly warped woman in a green sweater with her hair down and her eyes much too bright. She told the microwave woman to calm down. The microwave woman did not calm down.
She went to open the door.
* * *
He was standing on her porch with a bottle of wine in one hand and a paper bag from Sweetgrass in the other and snow in his hair.
He looked at her.
