He opened the door.
His wife was broken, and yet he had never loved her more than he did at that moment. She was nestled into the white pillows as if she had constructed an igloo around herself, but she had left one pillow on his side. Was it his Tempur-Pedic pillow? Had she left it there as a statement? He reached out to touch the cold, white linen pillowcase. Yes, it was his pillow. He knew the subtle—and not so subtle—ways Ella shut him out if she wanted to be left alone. This was a welcome card.
Felix tiptoed around the bed to the chair where he’d dumped his pajamas after changing the sheets for Eudora. Then he turned off the torch, so as not to wake Ella, and felt his way along the bedroom wall and into the bathroom. He brushed his teeth in polar water, and with a sharp intake of breath, lathered up soap and scrubbed his face. He stripped off his clothes, pulled on his pajama pants and T-shirt, and hurried back to the bedroom.
A movie played in his head of his first night with Ella, the taste of her, the smell of her, his hands shaking as he’d started to unbutton her black fitted shirt, which she’d left open to reveal a hint of lacy black bra. All evening at dinner, he had thought only of removing it. By the time they returned to the flat, Ella was drunk. Not fall-down drunk, but tipsy enough to raise the level of her giggle and cause her to sway against him as he fumbled to unlock the front door. Their first time was on the hall floor; the second time was on his flatmate’s sofa. The third time, they made it to his bed, where they stayed all weekend. The toast crumbs had lingered longer.
He moved around the edge of the bed like a crab, hand over hand. The cotton sheet was as cold as steel, their Tempur-Pedic mattress as solid as concrete. Had it frozen? Slowly, he lay down and huddled under the duvet, his limbs desperately searching out pockets of warmth.
Once the blood started pumping freely to his fingers and toes, Felix eased himself up onto his elbow. Ella was curled on her side, facing away from him. He wanted to touch the back of her neck, to run his fingers through her hair, but he didn’t.
On New Year’s Day, he’d started a research file for their twentieth wedding anniversary—a trip of a lifetime that would take three years to plan. Tomorrow he would destroy the file. They would go nowhere. There was only one thing he wanted for his twentieth anniversary: for his wife to live. And to mark that, they didn’t need to travel to the end of the world. All they needed was a weekend in bed that left behind a smattering of crumbs.
Felix pushed aside one of Ella’s pillows and slid his arms around her waist. Gently, so as to not hurt or wake her, he eased her back against his thumping heart.
He curled his legs under hers, and his mind stilled.
The heating chugged through the overhead vent and the clock on the cable box flashed 6:00 a.m. Power was back, but Ella’s side of the bed was empty and cold. Felix sat up and listened. She wasn’t in the bathroom. Where was she?
He jumped out of bed and raced into the living room. She was sitting on the sofa, hands folded in her lap, staring at the dead fire. Her pose, that of a woman wearing stays, was oddly uncharacteristic. All those years spent hunched over pieces of jewelry had wrecked her posture. She never sat bolt upright; she rarely sat straight. She was a woman who tucked and folded herself into every chair.
“Ella, what on earth are you doing out here?” How did she get this far by herself?
“There are things I need to tell you,” she said quietly. “Things I should have told you years ago. Things you have a right to know.”