or Mr. and Mrs. Salas, offered to drive Nora back to her place. But she’d wanted none of it. Wanted none of him.
“I’ll call you,” she’d said, cool and remote, and it’d sounded like San Diego all over again.
“Yes, but only because—”
“The problem is obvious. She’s very protective of her neighbors, whom you’ve said are basically her family. There’s been a lot of change in her building, and most of it has been your doing.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it, Gerald,” he said. “But also, that’s a little unfair. Her grandmother died, and so did my uncle. Now this, with Jonah. None of that’s my doing.”
“Hmm.” This was the noise Gerald made whenever Will introduced a new complexity to a case. Possible undiagnosed diabetes. A secondary infection that complicated the pharmaceutical plan.
Will felt liked he’d scored the most worthless point.
“I admit, I shouldn’t have mentioned the third-floor thing. At that moment.”
He’d figured that out even before he’d gotten on the elevator to leave, realizing what that tug of memory had been when he’d seen Nora turn pale and sick-looking at the mention of the building’s accessibility. That’s what he’d probably looked like, that day in the backyard when Mrs. Salas had found his parents’ photograph.
I’m rattled, he remembered telling her.
“But things had been going well before that. I was taking care of her. I took care of things for her neighbors, before she got there. I was only trying to—”
“You’re making her sound like a patient,” Gerald said, and Will straightened, defensive.
“You’re one to talk. You got Sally back—with my help, by the way—by planning nonroutine dates and not telling her anything about her table manners.”
There was a pause, and Will looked up to find Gerald rocking back slightly on his heels. Should he not have mentioned he knew about the elbows on the table thing, or . . . ?
“Actually,” Gerald finally said, “I got Sally back because last night I told her how much I loved her. I told her that the two and a half years I’ve spent without her have been the most colorless of my life. I made her a list of all the ways I’d failed her during our marriage, along with a list of all the ways I wanted to do better. I intended to read it out to her, but frankly I found myself too emotional.”
Will stared at Gerald in dumbfounded shock. He felt right on the verge of a recurrence of static brain. His expression must’ve shown it, because Gerald clarified.
“What I mean is, I cried.”
“I got that, Gerald.”
“Have you told this woman you love her?”
“No.”
“But you do?”
“It’s complicated.” No, it’s not, said his heart.
“Let’s say,” he corrected, “it is complicated for me to be in love.”
“I’ll need the history on this.”
Will shook his head, tucked his fingers under his glasses and rubbed, certain that Gerald was again rocking back on his heels in disapproval at this disgusting display. Two nights ago Will sat across from Gerald’s probably-not-really-ex-wife-anymore and passed on an opportunity to tell her the whole entire thing, and part of the reason why was that the man standing in front of him had been in the next room.
Frankly I found myself too emotional, Gerald had said, and all of a sudden, out in this hot parking lot with his heart half broken, Will thought Gerald Abraham might have the best bedside manner he’d ever seen, because the next thing he knew he was saying it all, everything about his parents that he hated to say. That they were selfish, immature, like they’d never grown out of their teenaged selves. He told him the worst of it: not just his mother trying to leave him with Donny, but also the many months after that. Will like a servant in his own house, trying to stay out of the way while they clung to each other in desperation. Holding his mother up in the funeral home while she wailed for a God he’d never known she believed in to take her, too. Nearly a whole year where she couldn’t bear to look at him, where despite his desperate protests, she took up all sorts of rash, reckless behaviors—smoking, drinking heavily, probably worse things he didn’t even know about.
“I almost felt relieved when she died,” Will said. “For her. It’s all she wanted, really. To go back to my dad. I know that makes me sound terrible.”
In the silence that followed Will felt half relieved, half sick to have said it. He stared down