“Oh,” said Benny quickly, bending down again. “I guess I grabbed the wrong—”
Mrs. Salas interrupted him with a heavy sigh and a hand on his arm. “Never mind. We’re keeping everything in the bins. I didn’t spend forty-five minutes arguing with my husband so he could come back down and try to get this silly helicopter out of here.”
The silly helicopter—remote operated, lots of “horsepower,” according to Mr. Salas—was probably the item in the boxes that would fetch the most money. But Nora definitely wasn’t going to say that, especially because if he’d given it up he was probably right now upstairs in his workroom building something that Mrs. Salas would find even more annoying.
Nora let her eyes pass away from Nonna’s lamp, onto the other gathered items she and her neighbors had brought down. The solidarity—and she had a feeling that’s what this was—helped. This was fine! That wasn’t even one of Nonna’s favorite lamps, even if it had been from Italy.
Behind her, she could hear Marian’s muffled raised voice inside the building, and within a minute she too was crossing the yard, shaking her head. “Third time I’ve shouted up those steps,” she said, annoyed. “I know he’s up there on his computer!”
“Oh, he’s met someone new,” said Mrs. Salas. “She lives in St. Louis! I don’t really approve of that.”
“Didn’t even meet her on an app,” said Benny. “They went to high school together.”
“Ooooh, what now?” Mrs. Salas said, and Marian rolled her eyes, but she also definitely tuned right in.
Nora might’ve joined in the gossip—she did like a good story about Jonah’s dating life—but almost as soon as Benny started to answer, her attention was pulled away by the familiar sound of gravel popping down the alley. When she looked up, she saw Will’s car pulling in to the spot for his apartment, vacated only yesterday by his first tenant.
Her stomach flipped in anticipation, and she pretended to rearrange items in the boxes so she wouldn’t get caught staring.
“Dr. Sterling is here!” called Mrs. Salas, waving at Will as he got out of his car. “Nora, did you know he was coming today?”
Nora straightened again, her face flushing. “I think he’s got someone new coming Monday,” she said, noncommittal, because she did know he would be coming. I’ll sneak up after I’m done, he’d said late the other night, whispering this promise against her skin. I want to see you before you go on your trip.
She hadn’t so much agreed as she had distracted him, letting her own lips move across his skin, making a set of promises to herself. Will Sterling was someone she wanted to choose for herself, and she was going to tell him so. No more secrets, no more limits, no more projects that she could take care of herself.
Tonight, she was going to tell him.
“I hope it’s not a man,” said Marian, and Benny nodded solemnly.
When Will came over, he was holding a bucket filled with a new roll of paper towels and some extra cleaning supplies, his smile in that easy, charming register that Nora had come to recognize not so much as false but as particular. Public-facing, practiced. It wasn’t her favorite expression of Will’s, but it delighted her that she could read it so well.
“Well, now,” he said, looking over the assembled boxes. “What’s been happening here?”
“Nora’s got us doing a charity drive,” Benny said, and Will looked to her, his public smile transforming, briefly, into something private.
“Have you come here to clean your apartment all by yourself ?” said Mrs. Salas, obviously impressed.
Marian clucked her tongue, because she did not approve of grade inflation in any form.
“Sure am. Took the day off.”
For this, Nora sent back her own private smile, an acknowledgment of Will having taken it a bit easier the last few weeks, not doing extra clinic shifts on his days off from the hospital.
“You won’t need the whole day,” said Marian. “That woman and her child, they were tidy people. Emily and I went in there twice, you know.”
Will looked at Marian. “Is that right?”
Mrs. Salas answered for her. “Oh, I went in there once, too! The daughter, she’s quite the young baker! Probably you’ll want to spend extra time on that oven.”
“Of course,” Marian said, “we told them they could come back for the next poetry night.”
Will nodded seriously. “Of course.”
But Nora could tell he was . . . proud, maybe. Proud and relieved, to get this tentative seal of approval from her neighbors. Suddenly she wondered if she’d even bother waiting until tonight to tell him. Maybe she’d follow him right into his apartment and tell him in the bright light of day, windows open. Who cared who heard it?
“Oh, here’s the beanpole,” came Jonah’s voice behind her. “I’ve got a bone to pick with you, now.”
Nora stiffened as Jonah approached, a paper grocery bag of stuff held against his chest. He set it down on the grass and put his hands on his hips, like he was ready for a confrontation. “I read that article you sent me.”
Nora looked over at Will, whose face was still in that practiced register. “Yeah?”
“I don’t see how you want to take something like pepperoni away from an old man,” he said, and Nora let out a relieved breath.
Will shook his head. “It didn’t say you couldn’t have pepperoni,” he said. “It said you should have less. And more fiber.”
“This is about my diver—” He broke off in the middle of this announcement to the full group. “What’s it called again?”
“Diverticulitis,” Will said, and then automatically looked to Nora. “It’s very mild.”
Mrs. Salas made a little fanning gesture beneath her chin. “He’s talking medicine!” she said to Marian quietly.
“It’s about my colon, Corrine,” Jonah said, annoyed.
“Are you being his doctor now?” said Marian, a note of suspicion in her voice. “Giving him medicines or something?”
“Not at all,” said Will, because now he knew you answered Marian’s questions. “We email a bit.”
He looked back to Nora, something sheepish in his eyes. That night they’d first been together, Will had told her he’d done what he had about the apartment—the longer stays, the more careful selection of tenants—for her. But Nora had a feeling he’d done it for everyone else, too, even if he hadn’t admitted that to himself. Somewhere between poetry night and cats in his apartment and taking care of Nora, he’d gotten to know her neighbors.
“Did he tell you about the woman from St. Louis?” asked Benny.
“That’s enough of that,” said Jonah, but his face might’ve gone a shade pinker as he set down his bag. “It’s a good thing you’re around, Beanpole. I found another book that belonged to your uncle.”
Once again Nora went tense. Bringing up Donny was worse than picking any bone, a tender spot she and Will still stayed away from.
But when she looked at him, she could see that his unbothered expression was authentic, his posture loose. When Jonah passed the paperback his way—the pages wrinkled and yellowed, the cover halfway torn off and faded—Will didn’t flinch, didn’t tense. He set down the bucket and took it. He looked down at it, not quite with curiosity, but not with pained indifference, either. The hold Donny had on Will seemed, at least lately, to have loosened.
“Were you going to try to donate this torn-up book to charity?” Marian said to Jonah.
“Someone would’ve taken it,” said Benny. “Like this—”
“Bernard, if you say something about my Wizard of Oz pillow . . .”
Nora stopped listening, though, because she was watching Will, who’d gently opened the book’s damaged cover to look inside, and something he saw there transformed him, made his jaw harden and his brow lower. He ran his thumb along the side of the pages, a flash reveal of text that Nora could see had been underlined, annotated. Blue pen, loopy cursive.
He cleared his throat. “This was my mother’s,�
�� he said quietly, but she wasn’t sure if he’d meant to.
“Now that explains it,” said Jonah. “A whole box of books about some detective with an alcohol problem and then this one! Definitely didn’t seem like Donny’s type of thing.”
Will didn’t respond. He closed the book again, bent to pick up his bucket, and Nora’s stomach clenched in sympathy for him, this surprise intrusion of something painful.
“Thanks for passing it along to me,” he said lightly, but she could tell that this was strained. “I guess I’d better get to work. I’m sure I’ll see you all soon.”
“Oh, wait,” said Mrs. Salas, as Will was turning away. “I think this must’ve fallen out.” She reached down to a white rectangle that had landed on top of the kitchenware box, and even before she turned it over, Nora had a sick, sinking feeling that the surprise intrusion was about to get a whole lot worse.
“Well now, these have to be your parents!”
Nora winced inwardly as Mrs. Salas stared down at the photograph she’d revealed—flat and glossy and well-preserved from the pages of the book it’d been tucked inside, bright with vivid color. Immediately, her neighbors had tucked in, getting closer to peer over Mrs. Salas’s shoulders, their expressions warm and interested.
“Golly,” Jonah said, looking up at Will. “There’s a real family resemblance!”
“All your height from your dad’s side, I guess,” said Benny. And Mrs. Salas added, “But this smile! Exactly like your mom’s. I see a bit of Donny in this smile.”
Nora opened her mouth to say something, to stop this, but right before she could speak her gaze caught with Will’s, his mask of calm marred by the pained look in his eyes, and he gave a small, warning shake of his head.
It doesn’t do any good for them to know, he’d told her, that night when they’d called off their feud, and this look said the same.
At the moment, though, Nora thought it would do some good. It would do some good if they would stop this, if they could read Will like she did, if they could know that this was hurting him.
“Baby faces,” Marian chimed in. “These two don’t look much older than my eighth graders.”
Nora was gripped with concern, with embarrassment, with—and this one, she was ashamed of—curiosity. But she would not look down at that picture. She kept her eyes on Will, and she knew he wasn’t looking at it, either, no matter that he had his head tipped in that direction. He’d unfocused his gaze; he was looking somewhere close to but beyond that photograph.
“Did they meet that young, Dr. Sterling?” asked Mrs. Salas, her voice infused with all the curiosity Nora would not allow herself to have.
Will cleared his throat. “First year of high school, I think.”
“Jonah!” said Benny, slapping the older man’s shoulder. “When did you meet your girl?”
Jonah set his hands on his hips again, tipping his head up to the sky in contemplation. “First year of high school seems early, but maybe . . .”
Nora breathed a small sigh of relief at the distraction, hoping they could fully move on to Jonah reigniting a flame with a fellow eighty-year-old.
But it didn’t last.
“My goodness, they look so in love,” Mrs. Salas said, and for a split second, Nora’s guard and her eyes dropped, a brief glance at the photograph that showed two young people—baby faces indeed, with their arms around each other, their gazes locked. She snapped her eyes back up, and found Will watching her.
“Do you mind if I take that?” Nora said, reaching out a hand, her patience for this suddenly run completely out. She needed to get him out of this situation, and fast. Every second, she could feel him wilting beneath the heat of it. But either Mrs. Salas hadn’t heard her, or she was too preoccupied by everyone else’s gathered assessment of the photo.
“You ought to bring them by sometime,” Marian said. “I certainly always thought Donny didn’t have any—”
“He didn’t,” interrupted Will, the first overt sign that his control was slipping. Once more, he cleared his throat, the sound weaker this time. When he spoke again, Nora could tell he was making an effort to deliver this piece of news with kindness. “What I mean is, my parents aren’t living.”
What happened next was something Nora had of course heard before in her life—a collective condolence sound, a tiny, off-key chorus of gentle awws and oohs and hmms. Nora had sung this song before, whenever she’d been in polite company and heard something heartbreakingly final but also wholly separate from herself. But it never sounded so wrenchingly hollow before this moment, no matter that she knew her neighbors truly meant it.
“It’s a beautiful photo,” said Mrs. Salas gently, holding it out to Will. “You should frame this, put it up somewhere where you can see it.”
“They’re not the kind of people you’d want a memorial to.”
In the brief, painful seconds of silence that followed, Mrs. Salas, Marian, Jonah, Benny—all of them—might’ve dropped their eyes in awkward, embarrassed surprise. But Nora didn’t know, because Nora couldn’t look away from Will. She watched as his expression transformed: fierce, pushed-to-the-limit defensiveness to blinking, Did I say that out loud? shock.
And then to shamed, desperate regret.
“I guess I’d better get to work,” he repeated, and it sounded like a repetition, a robotic sort of malfunction, like these were the only words available to him. He didn’t take the photograph; he didn’t look anyone in the eye. He simply turned and walked away, and Nora and her neighbors watched him go, no one uttering a word until the door closed behind him.
Jonah was the first to break the silence. “You sure stepped in it there, Corrine.”
“In fairness,” Marian said, “I stepped in it first, I’m pretty sure, saying he should invite them over.”
“We should apologize, or—”
“I’ll go talk to him,” Nora said, reaching out to take the picture, and it was strange, what happened next—each of her assembled neighbors asking her to convey a message, so different from all those weeks ago.
Please tell him—
If you could let him know—
I’m sorry I didn’t understand—
When she finally made her way inside, the picture held gently between her thumb and forefinger, she wondered if she’d have to knock. But she was encouraged by the fact that Will seemed to know she would come, the door to his place left open a crack. When she pushed it open slowly, she saw he was in the kitchen, his back to her as he unloaded supplies from his bucket, his shoulders set with tension.
“Will?”
He stilled briefly and then turned, his eyes going immediately, unerringly, to the photo she held at her side. When he looked back at her, she could tell the effort he was making—every line of his face, his body, looked so carefully arranged.
“Sorry about that,” he said. “I overreacted, I know.”
“You didn’t.” She knew he didn’t, even if she didn’t know all the details about his parents. She knew enough. She knew that whatever he saw in that photo represented everything painful to him about the way they’d been together, about the way they would’ve let him go.
He nodded toward the couch, where the battered book rested. “You can go ahead and put the photo back in there. I’ll take care of it later.”
Take care of it, she could tell, did not mean putting it somewhere safe. It had sort of a Let me tie cement to it and throw it in the lake energy.
But that wasn’t her business, so she did as he asked, not looking at the photograph again as she slid it between the pages, and then she went to where he stood, stepped into him, and put her arms around his waist.
At first, he responded like he’d been waiting for it, like he had an instinct for it—his own arms wrapping around her shoulders, his head lowering to rest against hers, the breath he’d been holding in his chest letting out slowly. She tightened her arms, wanting to hold him like that for as long as it took for him to feel better.
B
ut not long after he’d settled against her, he straightened again, unwrapping his arms and reaching behind him to where she held him. Gently, he loosened her hold, clearing his throat.
“Door’s open,” he said quietly, stepping back from her.
She ignored the unease she felt at the way he said it, reminded herself that the secrecy had been her idea all along.
“I don’t care,” she said, which wasn’t quite what she’d been planning on telling him today, but she supposed it was on the way to it.
He didn’t respond, only resumed his quiet unpacking of supplies. Nora looked around, saw Marian was right—it was pretty tidy in here. Still, she said, “Want me to help? Maybe afterward, we could get out of here, go get something to eat, or—” She broke off, struck with an idea that she thought might make things better, given what that photograph must’ve brought up for him. “We could go to your place?”
They’d never done that, not in all these days since they’d started to hang out even beyond the building. It didn’t seem that Will had any particular hang-ups about it, and it wasn’t like Nora had been dying to see it or anything—it just hadn’t happened yet. But now felt like the perfect time. Distance plus privacy, which might be exactly what he needed.
“I think I might go in to the clinic later. If this isn’t going to take all day.”
He wasn’t looking at her when he said it, but almost as soon as he’d finished speaking he set down the spray bottle he was holding and rubbed a hand over his face, sighing heavily.
“I’m sorry,” he said again.
“It’s really okay. I’m sure it’s hard, getting surprised by something like that. Something that’s painful for you.”
He breathed out a quiet huff, a laugh that wasn’t at all a laugh.
“It’s not,” he said, a stubborn note to his voice that he went on to correct. “It shouldn’t be. It’s a nice picture.”
Nora swallowed, uncertain. He didn’t like to talk about his parents; she knew that from the few times they’d come up. But all of a sudden, she had the feeling that if he didn’t talk about them, she’d never be able to tell him what she’d started this day so optimistic about.
Love at First Page 23