Chapter 11 - The Sidewalk Talk I Heard From My Sister's Car
I had told my sister I only needed five minutes at the house. I left the hospital bag by her couch and drove back with her in the passenger seat because my hands were shaking too much to park straight. That morning the light was still bright and flat on the driveway, the same daylight that had been in the entryway when Derek had his hand on the doorknob.
Derek's car was already in the driveway. He was standing at the edge of the sidewalk with his suitcase nowhere in sight, still in the navy polo and khaki shorts, his sunglasses pushed up on his head. He looked smaller out there without the door frame around him.
Dana from two doors down was out with her trash bin. She had her hair pulled back and a dish towel over her shoulder. She did not wave me over. She did not see me at first because my sister had parked across the street under the maple.
I rolled my window down half an inch. The air smelled like cut grass and hot concrete.
"You've had company this week," Dana said. She tipped the bin back. "That silver SUV. Twice."
Derek shifted his weight. He touched his watch and then dropped his hand. "She just gave me a ride," he said. "It wasn't anything."
Dana looked at him steady. "Tuesday and then again yesterday morning. Same spot. She didn't get out Tuesday. Yesterday she did."
My sister put her hand on my knee. I didn't move. The baby pressed low under my ribs and I breathed through it and listened.
"It wasn't an affair," Derek said. His voice was tight and controlled, the way it had been in the entryway. "I asked for a ride to the gas station. My car wouldn't start."
Dana frowned. "At ten in the morning? With a suitcase?"
Derek didn't answer right away. A school bus went past at the end of the street and the brakes sighed. He watched it go.
"Okay," he said finally. "I asked her to come. I needed to talk. That's all."
Dana crossed her arms. The dish towel slipped and she caught it. "I saw you by her car," she said. "You handed her something. A folder. Tan color. Papers."
My throat went dry. That was my folder from the floor by the duffel. The one I had set out on purpose between us. I could see it again, the corner bent where I had thumbed it open that morning.
Derek went still. "When?" he said.
"Yesterday. Before you went back inside." Dana nodded toward our front door, still closed. "You walked it out to her at the SUV. She put it in the front seat. You stood there a minute."
He rubbed the back of his neck. The sunglasses slipped and he caught them. For the first time since I'd known him, he didn't fix his expression before he spoke.
"I didn't think anyone saw that," he said quietly.
Dana shrugged. "I see a lot from my driveway."
My sister glanced at me. I kept my eyes on Derek. He turned and looked at our house, at the big window beside the door where the silver SUV had been visible that morning. He stared like he was replaying where I had stood in my brown sweater, what I could have seen from the entryway floor.
He said it almost to himself. "Maya saw."
It wasn't a question. His shoulders dropped a fraction. The controlled line of his mouth broke.
Dana didn't soften it for him. She pulled the empty bin back toward her garage. "She's pregnant, Derek," she said. "She notices."
May you like
He didn't deny it. He didn't make another excuse about the ride or the car. He just stood on the sidewalk in the bright daylight with his hands empty, looking from Dana's driveway to ours like the distance was longer than he remembered.
I put my hand over my belly and felt the baby move hard against my palm. My sister started the car again without me asking. We pulled away slow, and in the mirror I watched Derek stay where he was, alone by the curb, no suitcase, no SUV, no folder left to carry inside.
