Chapter 4: The Garage
He came home Monday at 6:10, just before dark.
I heard the bike before I saw it, that low rumble that used to mean Sunday afternoon and burgers on the grill. Lori had the kids at her house for dinner. I’d asked her to keep them until eight. She’d said, “Keep them till Christmas if you need to.”
I was waiting in the garage when the door rolled up.
He killed the engine and sat there a second, helmet still on, like he was deciding whether to take it off. When he did, the bruise on his cheek had gone yellow at the edges. He looked tired. He looked like a man who’d been rehearsing in his head for four hundred miles.
He climbed off, opened the left saddlebag, and pulled out my helmet.
White. Lavender stripe. A fresh scuff along one side, down to the gray.
He held it out to me. I took it with both hands. It was lighter than I remembered.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “About the helmet. That was stupid.”
“About the helmet.”
“About all of it. Dana. I know how it looks.”
“You keep saying that. How it looks.” I set the helmet on the workbench between us, next to his socket set and a coffee can full of screws. “I don’t care how it looks. I care what it was.”
“It was a ride.” He spread his hands. “It was the mountains and the road and somebody who wanted to talk about the same stuff I wanted to talk about. That’s it. I never touched her. Not once.”
“You brought her to our daughter’s birthday party.”
He went very still.
“You told Ava she was Mike’s cousin. She cut the cake, Brian. I handed her the knife and said thank you.”
“She wanted to meet the kids.” His voice cracked on kids. “She heard me talk about them all the time. I didn’t think…”
“No. You didn’t.”
He leaned against the bike, rubbing his face with both hands. When he looked up, his eyes were wet.
“Can I say something, and you won’t take it the wrong way?”
“Probably not.”
“I’ve been invisible in this house for about five years.” He said it softly. “You’ve got the kids, the schedules, the calendar. You’re amazing at it. I mean that. But I come home and I’m one more thing on the list. Take out the trash. Pick up Jack. Sign this. Nobody’s asked me how I’m doing since Dad died. On Sundays, out on the bike, I’m a person.”
I wanted to tell him he was wrong.
The problem was the calendar. My appointments were in pencil, but his weren’t on it at all. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d asked him about work, or his dad, or anything that wasn’t logistics. I’d been running the house like a dispatch center, and he’d been a truck I sent places.
That was mine. I could own that.
“You could have told me,” I said. “You could have said, Dana, I’m drowning. I’d have heard you. I’d have done something.”
“Would you? You’d have added me to the calendar.”
That one landed, and he saw it land, and he didn’t look happy about it.
“So you went and found somebody who wasn’t busy,” I said.
“I went and found somebody who saw me.”
“With my helmet on.”
He flinched.
“I didn’t sleep with her,” he said again. “You can believe that or not. I’ll take a lie detector. I’ll show you every message, every receipt. Separate rooms. I swear to God.”
And here’s the thing. I believed him. Mostly. The receipts. The way he said it. Fourteen years of knowing what his face does when he lies.
It didn’t help nearly as much as I’d thought it would.
Because I had one more question, and I’d been holding it since two in the morning on Saturday, since the overlook and the braid and the hands thrown up like ta-da. I’d been afraid of it for three days. I was more afraid of not asking it.
“Brian,” I said. “Look at me.”
He did.
“Did you love her?”
The garage was so quiet I could hear the engine ticking as it cooled.
He opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at the helmet on the workbench. Looked back at me.
“I don’t know,” he said.
