Page 87 of No Kind of Hero
She turned her head and kissed his chest. “Yes.”
“And you’re going back.”
She closed her eyes against it. “I have to.”
“Does it help,” he asked, “if I tell you I don’t want you to go?”
She laughed, an involuntary huff of breath, and felt him stiffen. “It doesn’t help,” she said. “It hurts. But I’ve put in six years of sixty, seventy, eighty hours a week, and three years of law school before that, all for this. It’s nine years of my life. All my adulthood.”
His hand was on her hair, stroking it. He was hurting, but he was comforting her, too. Because her pain was his own. “You think so,” he said, “but your adulthood is so much more than that. It’s the strength of you, and the way you care. The way you do the right thing, and the way you see people.”
She squeezed her eyes shut again, but this time, it was to keep away the tears. “I love you,” she said. “Did I say that?”
“But not enough to stay.”
It wasn’t an accusation. It was acceptance. And it hurt her that he couldn’t get angry anymore. “I can’t,” she said again. “But I want to see you. Ineedto see you. And Gracie. Next year, I’ll be a partner, and I’ll . . . we’ll . . .” She couldn’t finish that. She didn’t know what came next.
“What happens then?” he asked. “When you’re a partner? What’s different?”
“It’s . . .” she said slowly. “It’s a goal, and it’s another beginning. You don’t have to work as many hours. That’s why they make it so hard. To see who’s willing to do it. Who’sableto do it. Who has what it takes.”
“Who’s willing,” Evan said, “to give up everything.”
“For a while. And then you scale back to fifty, sixty hours. Which would feel like so much less.”
“Will it make you happy?”
Her hand stopped moving on his chest, and it was a long moment before she said, “I haven’t asked myself that question in so long. It’s never been the point.”
He didn’t ask her the obvious question.Shouldn’t it be the point?
“Let’s see if we can make it work,” she said, her voice a breath in the darkness. “Don’t break up with me, Evan. Please.”
“Oh, baby,” Evan said, and his voice was so sad. “I couldn’t. And anyway, you deserve your life. You deserve to get what you want.”
On Wednesday, Beth left him.
Early, because it was a seven-hour drive to Portland. Too far for a commute.
He hadn’t lain awake the night before. He’d been too exhausted for that, still, and he thought she had been too. But in the gray light of dawn, he’d held her warm body close to him and told himself,One more time. You can do this one more time. You’ve done it before.
But it felt like the first time. It felt like a layer of skin being ripped off, exposing every nerve. Raw, ugly, and so painful. And he was going to have to man up and take it.
He cooked her breakfast, and she poked at it, ate barely half in between feeding a quickly recovering Gracie her rice cereal, and said, “I need to go to Dakota’s and clean up some. Pack up, too. And then take Henry home and say goodbye to my folks.”
“Sure,” he said. “Tell your mom thanks again for me. Doesn’t seem like enough to say, but tell her.”
“I will. Henry’s going to miss you guys,” she said as Gracie waved her spoon, dribbling cereal. Henry leaped into action, and Gracie laughed all the way from her belly.
Evan said, “Gracie’s going to miss Henry, too. Someday, I’ve got to get her a dog.”
“I’ll come back,” Beth said. “Thanksgiving. We could . . . maybe we could cook.”
“We could,” he said, trying and failing to keep his heart from twisting, that ache from taking over. “We could have my mom over, maybe. That’d be a switch for her. And your parents, if you want.”
She paused, the baby’s spoon in the cereal, before Gracie’s banging on the highchair tray jolted her into movement. “Isn’t that something?” she said. “I couldn’t have imagined either of us thinking that a week ago. I guess good things really can come out of bad times.”
“I guess so.”
