DITW 15-5: Twelve Crops of Fruit (Patreon)

Josh asked her if it was them dining alone and she told him it was.

“We need to talk,” she said.

Josh agreed with her. “Right. We do.”

Hyun had set the table for them. A place setting for two, Kimmy at the head of the table, Josh’s place setting at her side. The sun set fast in October, and while it was early, the brighter outside light had faded from the windows, leaving the dull reflective squares in the color of unwashed denim.

She had never been more nervous in her life. Josh sat at her new dining room table, a long washed-oak handcrafted table she and Hyun had bought in Guelph and had delivered. Josh.

A man it had taken a whole year to prepare for. So much had to be in place before she would ever be able to receive Josh as a guest in her home. Really, in their home. She had used their money as a down payment and Josh had never even asked her why the money was gone.

The beard was an amazing contribution. Josh hid behind it (and she had no idea his beard would be so thick), but also projected a masculinity that surprised her.

Their dinner was a buffet style, the servings presented under covers on the table’s center, congregated to one end. She removed the closest lid covering the pottery casserole dish, saying, “I made dumplings.”

She watched Josh’s thickly bearded face, looking for a smile. He showed a reluctant one, a mildly pleasant curve restrained by pain.

“You love them,” she reminded him.

“I know I do,” he said. “That’s why I’m smiling. I do love them. I always did.”

She closed the lid and dipped her chin. “Hyun made them. I was . . . I was in Cambodia for the whole last week.”

Josh looked away. She saw the strange injury her husband suffered from her proxy-made dumplings and reached out to hold his wrist, showed him her most earnest expression describing the demanding week she’d just endured. “I wanted to make them for you, but I couldn’t. It’s my recipe. My mother’s.”

“I don’t mind that, it’s . . . Dumplings are the last thing we need to talk about, don’t you think?”

Her hand slipped from his wrist and she sat back in the chair. “We have a lot to talk about. There’s Colleen...”

Josh’s mouth tweaked to one side, the sign of a smile. She leaned forward again and touched his arm, rested her hand on it. She smiled as well, so deeply relieved that Josh accepted his daughter. Saw that she was his daughter with no extracurricular convincing.

Josh turned her way. “It’s a beautiful name, Kimmy. You must be happy about it.”

While not intended as an insult, there was a twist in what he’d said, one revealed in his tone; an unthreatening snideness. “Yes,” she admitted. “Eileen . . . Eileen had a baby boy. Andrew. He’s gorgeous.” Colleen was their mother’s name. If Eileen had given birth to a girl, Eileen would have been the one who named their daughter after their mother. She’d got there first.

Josh lifted the lid on the casserole dish and loaded two dumplings onto his plate. “You’re good at getting what you want.”

“Just luck, Josh,” she said, hurt by his barb. Benign as it was, Josh still had shields up, wanting to resist her. Maybe still hating her.

Josh bit into Hyun’s dumpling. “Someone’s looking out for you, I guess.”

She studied his profile, watched him chew. Josh had endured a terrible year. All the things his wife had done to him, then, according to Meyer, Josh had to take a leave of absence from Swanson. For mental health. Sophie had reported back that Uncle Josh was fine, but Sophie also conveyed a hidden worry. While Sophie reported Josh was “fine,” Sophie didn’t like how Josh had changed. And he had changed, she could see it herself now. His eyes betrayed a lot of concealed wounding.

She moved some dumplings onto her own plate, but had lost her appetite. “Meyer said you’re going back to work.”

Josh nodded. “Yeah. It’s time. I’m going back in on Wednesday.”

“The same as before?”

“I don’t think I’ll be going to Rome anytime soon, but, yeah, the same as before.”

Josh would have to earn their trust again. Have to show them he was still the solid and dependable guy he had been. Swanson couldn’t change his employment terms, not when he’d suffered a breakdown of sorts. He’d been in Rome for almost four months after they’d separated. That meant the last eight months he’d lived on disability. “It was your mom who told me you were going back. Meyer only confirmed it.”

Josh chewed and swallowed. “You talked to her this week?”

She nodded. Josh’s mother only knew they were separated, not that she’d been pregnant, and not that she’d borne her granddaughter. “On Facebook,” she said.

“Yeah. Your dad messages me on Facebook, too. Just checking in with me. Or he used to. I haven’t heard from him in a while.”

“He doesn’t like being online,” she said, turning her eyes down. “He asks me about you all the time.”

Josh leaned back from the table, sighing, his brow looking heavy. “I don’t think . . . I don’t think I want to eat.” He lifted his glass of sparkling water and sipped. When he put the glass back down, his eyes looked across the table, away from her. “How about your work? Meyer said you went back right after you gave birth.”

“I did,” she said.

“Says you’re not a lawyer anymore. Hyun told him you’re an executive.”

Her stomach tightened. Her own brow slumped, an oncoming storm on the horizon set to rock this table with some pretty big waves. “That’s right.”

“It looks like you’re doing well.” His eyes roamed the room.

“We can figure out the money later. I don’t want to talk about that tonight. I want to talk about us.”

“I don’t care about the money, Kimmy. You took the money to buy a house. Buy a house for our daughter. That’s what we saved that money for.”

She exhaled, bowed her head, determined not to sully the evening with talk of money. “It’s more complicated than that.”

“I bet it is,” Josh said, nodding.

“Okay,” she said, voice faded to a whisper. She cleared her throat and took a deep breath. “I’m at Stone. Stone Brokerage.”

Josh didn’t blow up, didn’t storm out. He accepted it, rolled it over in his mind then closed his eyes. “You told me you left and burned your bridge.”

“I did. All of that was true.”

Josh opened his watery eyes and regarded her. “Doesn’t sound like it was true.”

She didn’t respond right away, letting Josh rebuild his confidence after the news she remained at Stone, determined there would be no fight between them. She said, “It’s not the way it was before.”

Josh rolled his head away, looking like the urge to flee had hooked him. “That’s good,” he said, crackling with dry sarcasm.

“I’m not in my old position,” she said.

Josh groaned, the groan dragging out to a breathy chuckle while he shook his head. She saw the insinuation now, the dirty double entendre: we all know what position you used to have. Josh picturing his wife on her back with her legs up.

“I run it, Josh. I run Stone. I run Stone in Toronto.”

Josh stopped wagging his head, the attitude of the long-suffering man fading for a moment as he contemplated the pronouncement, his eyes darting over his plate and the untouched food. “But that was Devlin’s job.” He looked her way, brow crinkled.

“Devlin moved away, Josh,” she said. “Very far away.”

Josh eased a little but there was no mood for relief. He nodded his head, pursed his lips. “How far?”

“Vancouver, I think.”

Josh sat back from the table, stored energy building up and riling him. “Oh. I was just there a few months ago, I could have visited him.”

A small snuffling laugh escaped her and she smiled. Josh didn’t. Josh didn’t see any humor right now. But it wasn’t that there was anything funny, it’s just that there was no other more fitting response from the man she’d married. It was the perfect “Josh” response.

But Josh grew sombre. “That explains you and him.”

“Me and who?”

“You and Stone,” he said, jaw muscles flexing. He regarded her. “You and Devlin’s dad.”

“Oh,” she whispered, retreating from the table now, too, sitting back and crossing one leg over the other. “It does.”

  *

Kimmy reacted with calm control; somewhat bothered, yet ready to address the hardships of life to her long-suffering and milquetoast man. “I heard about the picture,” she said. “The $14,000 picture.”

Josh snorted, bothered, annoyed, not finding any humor in Meyer’s callous labeling of his own cousin’s heartbreak. And hurt that Kimmy would. “Well, it was a strange way for me to find out.”

“Should I have called you?”

He grumbled, annoyed with her, studying her, divining her attitude from the words she used. They were challenging and dismissive. Before he could even consider a response, Kimmy had a follow-up.

“Did you call me when you dated Karina?”

He thumbed his cheek, looking near her but not at her. He hadn’t expected her to say that. “Maybe you have a point,” he said, regretting the sharp turn dinner had taken. Maybe she didn’t think he had the right to question her dating choices. They were married but separated. But not legally separated. They had a child together. And yet, he hadn’t talked to her. He hadn’t come to see his baby. But now that he had come, it was so clear: the longer he stayed away, the longer it was possible Colleen was his child. By staying away, he’d preserved the fondest of his possibilities: that something was salvageable from what he’d considered the most important aspect of his life; a sound, loving relationship with the woman he married. He said, “I don’t want to fight.”

Kimmy put her elbows on the table and intertwined her fingers, regarding him through slimmed eyes. “How is Karina?”

He shrugged. “We’re not dating.”

“You were, though.”

“Kind of. Yeah, I guess. It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“I don’t think about it, Josh. We’ve been apart. I have no right to make any claims of dismay I might have about it.”

“So, Stone, huh? How did that happen? I mean, the last time we talked, you know, face to face, you told me you burned the bridge, you started something you couldn’t stop. You told me I’d try to save you, and you didn’t want that. Yet, here you are.” He gestured to the table, then the house. He gestured toward her. Looking beautiful. Nestled in a perfect house. With their baby. Wearing fine clothes. Back to work. No maternity leave. No maternity leave because she had Hyun. “How did you end up with everything? How did you wind up with everything and I have nothing? What was it that I might have tried to save you from? Because, you know, I didn’t save you. I stayed away. Far, far away. For months. In Rome.” He scoffed, remembering the hateful resentment he could sometimes feel toward her, all of it racing back now, just when he’d thought they could find some reconciliation. There was something clear now. He slumped, felt the sick swirl of jealousy. “Someone else saved you. He did. Devlin’s dad.”

Kimmy lowered her hands, still interdigitated, but more like prayer now. She looked at the food on her plate. She nodded, almost imperceptibly at first, then enough for him to recognize it as affirmative.

She’d told him to stay away. She let another man save her. A savage pain bloomed in his heart, fat petals of sick jealousy unfurling inside him, bloating under pressured turgor. He groaned, unmanned, easing back from the table and looking away from her.

How could she still hurt him so badly when they’d been apart so long?