The memory keeper's daughter - Kim Edwards [42]
“Norah!” David met her at the door, still carrying Paul. “Norah, what happened to you? You’re bleeding.”
“It’s okay. I’m okay,” she said, refusing David’s hand when tried to help her. Her foot hurt, but she was glad for the sharp pain; a counterpoint to the throbbing in her head, it seemed to run straight through her in a line and hold her steady. Paul was sound asleep, his breathing slow and even. She rested the palm of her hand lightly on his small back.
“Where’s Bree?” she asked.
“She’s looking for you,” David said. He glanced into the dining room and she followed his gaze, saw the ruined dinner, the streamers all pooled on the floor. “When you weren’t home, I panicked and called her. She brought Paul over, and then she went out looking for you.”
“I was at the old house,” Norah said. “I hit a trash can.” She put her hand to her forehead and closed her eyes.
“You were drinking.” He made the statement calmly.
“Wine with dinner. You were late.”
“There are two empty bottles, Norah.”
“Bree was here. It was a long wait.”
He nodded. “Those kids tonight, the ones in the crash? There was beer all over the place. I was terrified, Norah.”
“I wasn’t drunk.”
The phone rang and she picked it up, heavy in her hand. It was Bree, her voice swift as water, wanting to know what had happened. “I’m okay,” Norah said, trying to speak calmly and clearly. “I’m fine.” David was watching her, studying the dark lines on her palm where the blood had settled and dried. She pressed her fingers over them and turned away.
“Here,” he said gently, once she hung up, touching her arm. “Come here.”
They went upstairs. While David settled Paul into his crib, Norah eased off her ruined stockings and sat on the edge of the tub. The world was becoming clearer and steadier, and she blinked in the bright lights, trying to put the events of the evening in their proper order. When David came back, he brushed the hair from her forehead, his gestures gentle and precise, and started cleaning the cut.
“Hope you left the other guy in worse shape,” he said, and she imagined that he might say this same thing to the patients who came through his office: small talk, banter, empty words as a distraction from the work he was doing.
“There was no one else,” she said, thinking of the silver-haired man leaning into her window. “A cat startled me, and I swerved. But the windshield—oh!” she said, as he put antiseptic on her cut. “Oh, David, that hurts.”
“It won’t last long,” he said, putting his hand on her shoulder for a moment. Then he knelt down by the tub and took her foot in his hand.
She watched him pick out the glass. He was careful and calm, absorbed in his thoughts. She knew he would attend to any patient with these same practiced motions.
“You are so good to me,” she whispered, longing to bridge the distance between them, the distance she had made.
He shook his head and paused in his work and looked up.
“Good to you,” he repeated slowly. “Why did you go there, Norah, to our old house? Why don’t you want to let it go?”
“Because it’s the final thing,” she said at once, surprised by the sureness and sorrow in her voice. “The final way we leave her behind.”
In the brief instant before he looked away there was, on David’s face, a flash of tension, of anger quickly repressed.
“What would you have me do that I’m not doing? I thought this new house would make us happy. It would make most people happy, Norah.”
At his tone, fear rushed through her; she could lose him too. Her foot throbbed, and her head,