Page 120 of Bountiful
Dave was not in the living room when I went back out there. Nor thekitchen.
I found him in the baby’s room, standing quietly in the dark, looking down at his sleeping child. While I hovered in the doorway, he bent down to lift the blanket over her sprawled out body, and whisper something Icouldn’thear.
Tears sprang into the corners of my eyes, and I left the doorway quickly to blinkthemaway.
“Okay,” he said when he joined me in the living room. “Shallwe?”
“When are you coming back?” Benito asked, his eyes on the RedSoxgame.
“He’s shipping out at four-thirty,” I said. “So I can come backwhenever.”
Benito looked up. “Oh.Fuck.”
Right.
He stood and held out a hand. “Hope to see you back hereagain.”
“You can count on it,” Dave said to me as much as to Benny. “Thanks for the babysitting. You know, for the last sixteenmonths.”
Benito grinned. “It was really my pleasure. I’m the favorite uncle for sure. Got the trophy andeverything.”
He waved us off, and I followed Dave outthedoor.
ChapterThirty-Five
Dave
The minuteI told Zara I had to leave, everything began to feelwrong.
She was a trooper, though. My Zara put her game face on and did what needed doing. I fell a little more in love with her as she straightened her spine against yet another disappointment and followed me in her crappy little car to thecabin.
We made quick work of packing the place up. There wasn’t much food in the kitchen because I’d been spending so much time with her. “What about the keys?” Zara asked. “Can you just leave them here on thecounter?”
“Sure can,” I said. “Place looks fine, right?We’redone.”
She gave me a sad smile. “We are. Let’s get you some sleep. You’re going to be driving in just a fewhours.”
“Sleep is overrated,” I said, catching her around the waist. But my smile felt fake, and there was an unfamiliar tightness in my chest. “God, I hate this,” I said suddenly. “I hate leaving you. Bothofyou.”
Zara’s stalwart expression slipped. “I know,” she said softly. “Itsucks.”
Then she kissed me to shut me up, and it totallyworked.
We laya long time in the dark together after making love. I couldn’t sleep until I felt Zara drift off. And then I slept the anxious slumber of someone who knows his alarm clock is going to go off way tooearly.
And then it did. I lay there groggily, trying to summon the will to sit up. And I thought back to the last time I’d left Zara on my way back to New York—when I’d slept in her bed uninvited. “You’ll say goodbye to me this time, right?” Irasped.
“Yes. I promise,” she said into herpillow.
I trailed my palm over her hair, then her long neck, and then onward down the silky skin of hernakedback.
How did peopledothis?
She reached out and gave me a shove. “Take your shower, honey. Push the button on the coffee pot.Goon.”
Iwent.
Thirty minutes later I was behind the wheel of my car, driving slowly out of Green Rocks on a gravel road, startling a doe and her fawn in the pre-dawn gloom. There was very little traffic in Vermont at any hour. So as I made my way to Interstate 91 before five a.m., I felt like the last man alive. On the highway there was nobody but the occasional big rigandme.
