Free My October by Claire Holden Rothman Page B

behind the frosted glass window. He was down here, after all. A good sign, perhaps, if he felt he could leave Hugo alone upstairs. Her blood quickened as the door swung open.
    She smiled broadly, reaching out both arms. How she had missed him. Her mind could forget, but not her body. It always turned to him, like a plant to the sun. Remarkable how instinctive it was, how rooted in the cells. His smell too, especially around the mouth, never failed to arouse her.
    He didn’t smile. Didn’t even meet her gaze.
    â€œI’m back,” she said, and instantly regretted it. Luc had a special scorn, as her father did, for people who stated the obvious.
    â€œI managed to catch the early train.” Another useless statement. She should stop. What did she want from him? Praise? Thanks? He was probably irritated even before he saw who was at the door. She must have interrupted his work. He was wearing long johns and gym shorts: his uniform. And the lovely soft pullover she’d bought for him last Christmas. His chest hairpoked out at the neck. If he hadn’t looked so forbidding, she would have stepped into his arms.
    â€œHugo is upstairs,” he said.
    â€œI’ll go up, then,” she said, as brightly as she could, but she was hurt. After a sleepless night, she had hurried to catch the train, in which she had fretted, dry-mouthed and dry-eyed, lapsing repeatedly into a doze and just as repeatedly being shaken awake. She had left her stricken father and her exhausted, lonely mother because her husband’s suffering meant more to her than theirs. He was everything to her. “You okay?” she asked, not daring to touch him.
    He looked at her. Finally. His eyes were ringed with blue. It had seeped like ink into the hollows on either side of his nose and up into the lids. His hair looked greyer. Could that happen in the space of six days? Or had their separation, short as it was, opened her eyes and made her look at him a little more closely? His hair was still thick, still beautiful—inviting touch, inviting her to rake her fingers through it—but the colour was definitely fading.
    â€œNo,” he said. “No. In fact, I’m not.”
    She took a step toward him, but he moved backward. She could barely see him. It was always so dark down here. As usual, all the curtains were drawn. As her eyes adjusted to the gloom, she saw that he hadn’t been working after all. Or at least, not writing. Boxes were strewn behind him on the floor. A couple were filled with books and manuscripts. And he seemed to have dismantled the pine IKEA table on which he wrote. The top of it was leaning against the hallway wall.
    Luc saw her confusion. “I found an office,” he explained.
    â€œAn office?”
    He looked at her impatiently, waiting for her to remember what he was talking about. Yes. Rémi was moving back.
    â€œI thought that was for December.”
    â€œIt is.”
    â€œDecember’s in two months.”
    Luc made an exasperated face, a face that said he’d tried his best.
    â€œLook, I’m sorry,” she began, but he held up his hands, stopping her mid-sentence. He wasn’t looking at her. Wouldn’t meet her eye. He was angry, that much was obvious. But so angry that he felt compelled to move out the instant she got home? His face wasn’t giving her any clues, so she screwed up her courage. “What’s this about, Luc?”
    â€œPeace,” he said tersely, still not looking at her, picking up a dictionary from the floor—his dog-eared Larousse —and holding it against his chest. “And quiet. Two things I’ve never been able to find here.”
    It was as if he had reached out and pushed her. His laptop was folded up too, she noticed, right beside the dismantled desk, ready to go. Hannah retreated onto the front step, out of the building that for years they’d both called home. Her head felt empty, almost