Merrily Ever After--A Novella by Jenny Holiday

Author:Jenny Holiday
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 2018-12-03T16:00:00+00:00

Elise thought about pretending to be asleep when she heard the front door open. All she would have had to do was close her eyes. She was already in bed. It was dark. It was profoundly dark, the storm having knocked out the power on their block.

Part of her didn’t want to see him. What more was there to say after this morning?

Well, there was a lot to say. Logistical conversations to be had. Like, who would get the house. The house they had bought and made into a home together.

And would he want anything to do with the child? Legally speaking, she could probably force him, but she would never do that. But certainly there’d be some kind of child support arrangement—Jay was not one to shirk his responsibilities. She had tried to ask Wendy how that would work, but Wendy had refused to talk about it, insisting that Elise let things settle for a week or two before worrying about what came next.

Elise knew Wendy was right. She shouldn’t be thinking about all this stuff right now. She just couldn’t seem to turn off her brain.

Which was why she was lying there staring into the dark, unable to sleep despite her weariness. She had spent a lot of time recently—since she’d told him yesterday afternoon and he’d left—sobbing. But after leaving Jane’s this morning, she had stopped. She was run dry. Parched. Her body was a shell, empty of tears. Empty of everything.

Well, not everything. She placed a hand over her still flat belly.

She heard him sliding the deadbolt back into place on the front door, which should have been impossible given the racket from the wind and rain lashing the house, but she was suddenly extra-attuned to everything. Like all that emptiness had left room for the smallest sounds to ricochet around inside her. Amplify.

His keys hitting the dish on the entryway table clanged like an out-of-tune bell.

Usually, when he got home and he wasn’t sure if she was there, he called out, “Lise?” Or “Sweetheart?” which was his preferred term of endearment.

There was no greeting this time, just the sounds of him walking through the house, then hitting the bottom step, which always squeaked. When they had first moved in, she’d thought to herself that no teenagers could sneak into this house late at night—that step would give them away.

But then she’d remembered that there would be no teenagers in this house, at least not during their tenure.

After the squeaking quieted, she heard the swish-swish of his socks against the rest of the hardwood steps.

The swishes slowed as he got closer. Almost like he was afraid. But Jay wasn’t afraid of anything. Jay was brave.

Despite the heightened hearing that had made his approach so excruciating, when he actually arrived, when he stopped moving, she could not hear him. She couldn’t see him, either, thanks to the blackness.

But she felt him. Felt him like she always did. His steady presence. His care, which he had always wrapped her up in as surely as the duvets she was under.

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