“These scuffs?” He bent down to an ugly black mark that arced across several planks of molasses-colored wood. “They’re from the work boots. They’ll rub right off.”
He stood up to hug her. Her body went rigid when he touched her, but he felt her shoulders relax when Bub, in his other arm, kissed her on the cheek.
“Just go downstairs and tell them where you want everything. I’ll stay up here to make sure they put everything in the center of the rooms—well away from the walls. Okay?”
Caroline disengaged herself from his arms and nodded. She brushed past the men and made her way down the main stairs.
With the help of the foreman, they worked out a system in which Caroline marked each box with a note that told Ben where she wanted it; then he made sure it got there. It was near dusk by the time all the furniture was settled into the correct rooms.
The pieces for the upstairs rooms remained in their boxes, but the men had assembled the tables and arranged the new couches and chairs that Caroline had purchased for the main floor. There was a grand mahogany table in the dining room with matching buffets and breakfronts. Classic leather and microfiber couches now stood in several of the rooms, and the library had a trio of red settees squaring off in front of the fireplace.
After Ben had tipped the men and seen them off, he fixed the boys up with something to eat and began cutting the boxes away from the upstairs furniture. He called for Caroline, but she did not answer. After he put Bub in his crib and got Charlie settled, he took the house room by room, looking for her. He found her sitting in the dark, on a large chocolate-colored couch in the room where they hoped to one day add a bar.
“You okay?” he asked her.
“How could I not be?” she asked. There was an open bottle of red ice wine on the floor, a glass in her hand.
“Do you have a glass for me?” he asked. They rarely drank during the week, and they’d been saving that bottle for a special occasion.
She didn’t answer, so he went to get one from the kitchen. He pulled a glass out of the cabinet and considered whether or not to join her. He wanted to look for Hudson again, but there was something about Caroline that made him not want to leave her alone. When he returned to her, he filled his glass and sat beside her. The room’s huge windows looked out upon the bloody remains of the day’s last light.
“I love all the couches,” he said. “Comfortable and just the right color.”
“Sorry about yelling at the men up there,” Caroline said. “Thanks for talking me through it.” Ben never knew what to expect when she was like this. “I don’t know why I got upset. Everything was fine, then…I don’t know. The next thing I know I’m screaming.”
“There was a lot going on at once, and you were by yourself. It was completely normal to feel stressed out.”
“I used to run a division that rang up billions of dollars in transactions. I know how to deal with moving pieces. I used to be able to handle all this.” They sat in the dark except for a few candles on the table. The light flickering across her face made her look tired.
“But this is your money—your home,” Ben said. “It’s natural to be passionate about something you’re so close to.”
“I hate having to need you. I hate being managed.”
“We came up here for a new life, Cee, one that we make the rules to. We just have to find our equilibrium. Right now everything is crazy, but we’ll figure it out.”
“I’m not happy, Ben. And I haven’t been happy in a long time.”
Ben let this hit him in the face, but it slowed him for only a moment. “Are you keeping up with your pills?”
“Those goddamn pills.”
“Do you want to talk to Dr. Hatcher?” he asked.
“No.”
“He said that the talk therapy is important. Lot of people who—”
“I’m not interested in being one of those people.”
“No, I guess not,” he said. He hadn’t seen his anger coming. Like the night before, it had begun as fear, but now it flamed to fury and it was too late to stop it. “You’re a person who enjoys being miserable. Who wants everyone around her to be just as unhappy, because you’re either too proud or stubborn or stupid to do anything about it. You want to wallow in it. You want to wrap it around yourself like a blanket and twist it tight enough for it to strangle you. You want to martyr yourself with your own misery.” He got to his feet and stood in front of one of the windows. A strand of red clouds scorched the dark sky.
“When I was twelve, there was this boy, a little older than me, who lived a few houses down,” Caroline said after a few moments. “He had white-blond hair and eyes the color of the Caribbean. One day I paged through one of Mom’s magazines, looking for the perfume samples, and I saw this ad for Aruba. I’d never seen anything like it. White sand and blue water. That was the color of Paul Cole’s eyes. God, I loved him. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but it was like…gravity. I was just drawn to him whenever he was close.”
“Why are you telling me this?” Ben asked.
“I guess every neighborhood has a dream boy like that. My neighborhood also had a block party on the Fourth of July. Everyone outside, grilling and playing and talking. It’d start in the afternoon and last until after the fireworks. Kids jumped through the sprinklers, and I did, too, even though that summer I was too old for it. And Paul Cole walked down the sidewalk, carrying buns for the burgers his dad was cooking. I remember seeing him there. I couldn’t help myself. I ran up to that boy, got on my tiptoes, put my hands on his chest, and kissed him. Right there on the mouth. In front of half the neighborhood. I hadn’t kissed anyone before. I didn’t know what I was doing. But his incredible eyes opened and his face broke into a shy smile. The best kind of smile I could have hoped for.” She was crying now, the tears rolling from her cheeks to her blouse.
“Why are you telling me this?” Ben asked again.
“I thought you should know.”
“What? Why?”