Chương 1
"Godfrey’s face changed when I unlocked my phone, and that tiny change told me more than anything he had said since I walked through the gate.
I did not call the police, a lawyer, or the hospital.
Instead, I opened my banking app and stared at the balance long enough for Selina to notice.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Checking something.”
Phedra’s fingers were still twisted into the back of my shirt, and when I shifted my weight, she tightened them as if I might disappear again.
I hated that reflex more than I hated Godfrey’s scotch or the necklace at my mother’s throat.
Four years of calls had taught my wife to expect me as a voice inside a phone.
Eleven months had apparently taught her that even the voice could be taken away.
I put the phone back in my pocket.
“We’re going to the hospital.”
Selina stepped toward me.
“Damian, before you make a scene—”
“I’m not making one.”
“You just came home.”
“I noticed.”
“You don’t know what has been happening here.”
“That’s true.”
The answer stopped her.
Godfrey recovered first.
He bent to pick up his broken glass, then seemed to remember that Phedra had been expected to do such things and straightened again.
“You’re going to believe her after five minutes?”
“I haven’t said who I believe.”
Phedra looked up at me.
For one awful second, I felt her hand loosen.
I turned to her.
“I said I haven’t decided what happened yet.”
Her eyes dropped.
“But I know you need a doctor.”
That was enough to make her grip my shirt again.
I carried her through the house because her knees would not hold.
She protested once, softly, telling me she could walk, but her body contradicted her before the sentence was finished.
The house I had paid to renovate seemed obscene around us.
There was the wide refrigerator Selina had told me was necessary because the old one leaked.
There was the sectional couch Godfrey had described as a bargain.
There were recessed lights, polished cabinets, a wine cooler, and a television large enough that I could see my own reflection carrying my sick wife across the room.
Near the kitchen door sat a pair of muddy men’s sneakers that cost more than the monthly rent on the room I had shared in Calgary.
I almost laughed.
Not because anything was funny.
Sometimes the body chooses the wrong exit for pressure.
Godfrey followed us outside.
“Take my SUV.”
I stopped.
He tossed the keys once in his palm.
“It’ll be faster.”
The vehicle had been bought with money I thought was keeping my wife safe.
I took the keys.
“Thanks.”
His eyebrows moved slightly.
He had expected anger.
So had Selina.
Maybe anger would have made them comfortable.
A furious man could be called irrational.
A furious man could break something, regret it, apologize, and be pulled back into the old family machinery.
I buckled Phedra into the passenger seat instead.
Selina came down the front steps with her purse.
“I’m coming.”
“No.”
“I’m her mother-in-law.”
“No.”
“Damian.”
I closed Phedra’s door.
My mother’s expression hardened in a way I knew from childhood.
It was the face that had once made me confess to breaking a window I had not broken because Godfrey was nine and cried more convincingly than I did.
“You’re embarrassing me in front of the neighbors.”
I looked across the street.
Mrs. Vickers was pretending to water a plant that did not need watering.
Two houses down, somebody had stopped pushing a lawn mower.
Apparently humiliation still mattered to Selina more than what was happening inside the SUV.
“Then go inside.”
I drove away before she could answer.
For the first several minutes, Phedra said nothing.
She watched the houses pass and kept both hands in her lap.
At a red light, I noticed that one of her thumbnails was split nearly to the quick.
“Are you in pain?”
“A little.”
“Where?”
She gave me a tired smile.
“That’s a longer answer.”
The light changed.
I drove.
At the next intersection she said, “You weren’t supposed to see me like this.”
I tightened my hands around the steering wheel.
“How was I supposed to see you?”
“After.”
“After what?”
“After I got better.”
She said it with such ordinary certainty that my throat closed.
I concentrated on a delivery truck ahead of us.
Its rear door had a faded cartoon tomato painted on it.
For almost a mile, that stupid tomato became the most important object in the world because looking at it kept me from crying.
Phedra noticed anyway.
“You still do that.”
“Do what?”
“Pretend you’re interested in traffic when you don’t want me looking at you.”
“I am interested in traffic.”
“Of course.”
Her voice was weak, but for a second she sounded like my wife again.
At the hospital entrance, an orderly brought a wheelchair after seeing her struggle to get out.
The questions began immediately.
Name.
Date of birth.
Current medications.
Treating physician.
Last treatment.
Insurance information.
Phedra answered some.
I answered almost none.
When the nurse asked when she had last eaten a full meal, Phedra hesitated.
“Thursday, maybe.”
It was Sunday.
The nurse looked at me.
I felt the accusation even though she had not made one.
“I came home today,” I said.
Phedra touched my wrist.
“He didn’t know.”
The nurse’s face softened only slightly.
That was fair.
I had spent four years telling myself distance was sacrifice.
From where she sat, distance probably looked a lot like absence.
They took Phedra through double doors and told me to wait.
I sat beneath a television showing a baseball game with the sound muted.
A vending machine hummed beside me.
Someone’s child was building a tower from folded visitor pamphlets.
My phone began vibrating.
Selina.
I declined the call.
She called again.
Then Godfrey.
Then Selina.
May you like
Then a message appeared.
You need to come home so we can discuss this as a family.
