HER: The Terms

Sadie has folded the corner of a page to mark the place where I tried to kill her.

I straighten it before I continue reading. It’s a habit. Paperwork should be kept in order, particularly when someone has gone to this much trouble.

She watches from the bed.

There’s a cup of water on her tray, a tissue worked into a hard little ball, and a pen with the hospital’s name printed on the barrel. I wonder how many people have signed consent forms with that pen. People rarely read them as carefully as they should. Then they blame the doctor when something surprises them.

“You’ve been busy.”

Her face gives me very little. She has improved at that. Before, you could watch an entire conversation happen behind her eyes while she struggled to decide which part to say aloud.

Now she has written it down.

All of it, apparently.

I turn another page. My wife has said things to this woman that she has never said to me. Some are lies. Some are familiar enough to be uncomfortable. Ann has a way of improving a story while she tells it. She gives herself better intentions. Other people get worse ones.

Sadie has been paying attention.

I set the pages on my knee and look at the evidence she has put in front of me. Video. Recordings. Our home, our voices. There are things here that cannot be dismissed as the confused recollections of an injured woman.

I do not ask where she keeps the rest.

She has made it plain that the story can be published, and that the police can hear what she has heard. I take her seriously. It would be foolish not to, after everything it took to get her into this bed.

“What do you want?”

Her hand goes to the pen.

For a moment I expect a number. It would be a relief. Money has limitations I understand.

She draws a sheet toward her and writes slowly. I wait. Waiting is part of my work, and I’m good at it. There’s no need to frighten her by watching the clock.

When she turns the paper around, I read it once. Then again.

Ann’s eyes.

I look up at her.

She holds my gaze. No confusion. No apology. Whatever difficulties she has moving through the world now, she has managed to arrive at this particular thought with remarkable precision.

“You understand what you’re asking.”

She nods.

I glance toward the door. A cart rattles past. Someone laughs out in the corridor, and for a few seconds the ordinary hospital carries on around us.

My wife is probably talking to a reader somewhere. Tilting her head for a photograph. Making a stranger feel as though they share something special.

She is exceptionally good at that.

“Why?”

Sadie looks down at the paper again. Her answer takes longer this time. I watch the pressure of the pen, the small pauses. She knows I’m waiting and makes no effort to hurry.

She’ll need me.

I sit back in the chair.

It is such an ugly little sentence that I almost admire her for writing it. Most people would dress it up. They would talk about consequences, or fairness, or what they deserve. Sadie has spared us that much, at least.

“She needs you now.”

Sadie shakes her head.

I think of Ann’s travel schedule. The interviews, the invitations, the people who appear to have discovered her just in time to become indispensable. I think of how our life looked when we arrived on Penny Lane and how much of it has become an inconvenience to her since.

She still comes home. Of course she does. She is my wife.

But sometimes coming home looks very much like stopping by.

Sadie reaches for her story. I hand it to her. She finds a page, presses her finger beside a line, and slides it back across the tray.

I read what Ann told her about leaving me.

My first reaction is to explain. My wife says things. Sadie should know that by now. She offers people whatever they need to keep them close, and what they need can change from one conversation to the next.

Of course, I could spend the afternoon making allowances for my wife’s behavior, as though I were the one who had been indiscreet.

I read the line again.

“She told you that because you wanted to hear it.”

Sadie doesn’t disagree. Somehow, that makes it worse.

I turn back to the first page of terms. “And you would take care of her.”

She nods immediately.

“For how long?”

Her eyes flick toward the pen, then back to me. She doesn’t write anything. There is no number for that either.

A nurse appears in the doorway and asks if everything is all right. I gather the loose pages before they can slide from my knee.

“We’re discussing the future,” I tell her.

She smiles at Sadie. “That’s good.”

It is, apparently. The future has become a subject on which everyone has an opinion.

When we’re alone again, Sadie writes something else. She pushes it toward me, eager now, because she has seen that I am still here.

Her career doesn’t have to end.

Below that, she has written a word my wife likes very much.

Inspiration.

I almost laugh.

Ann could still work. There would be adjustments, certainly. There would be a story to tell the public, and people to reassure. She would hate the dependence at first. She would hate quite a lot of it.

But she would be home.

Sadie watches me think. I understand now what Ann saw in her. It takes nerve to offer a man a solution to a problem he has not admitted he has.

I pick up the page about leaving me and place it beneath the others. Then I square the whole stack against the edge of the tray.

“The recordings stay private.”

She nods.

“The story, too.”

Another nod. She knows I haven’t answered her yet. She is trying very hard not to show how much that matters.

I look at her for a long moment. I could still stand up. I could leave these pages on the bed and walk out as the man who came in here to contain a problem.

Instead, I lift the pen from the tray and set it within easy reach of her hand.

“Write down the rest.”

When I leave, I stop at the nurses’ station and ask them to make sure Sadie has everything she needs.