4. Avery #2
The anniversary is farther back. I find the date by searching the month, and the thread opens on a photograph of Sasha’s legs stretched across my pale green sheets.
The blue mug sits on the nightstand beside her.
I lower the phone, press the dish towel harder around my hand, then force myself to look again.
Aren’t you supposed to be taking your wife somewhere? she asks.
Can’t leave yet, Declan answers.
You can leave. You don’t want to.
His reply comes after the time I called him from the restaurant.
Reservation’s handled. Lock the side door.
Below it, Sasha answers, Locked. You’re two rooms away. Maybe it was a joke about how close he already was while I waited under an awning in a grey sweater. Declan sends a picture of the anniversary dessert I texted him and writes, She’s trying to make me feel bad.
Sasha answers, Is it working?
Not enough to leave.
I make a sound in the garage and bite it off against the dish towel.
I had stood at our kitchen counter with that dessert beneath plastic wrap, embarrassed by how much I wanted him to know I wasn’t angry.
I took the picture from the angle that made one plate look like two.
I sent a heart after his. He showed Sasha my effort, and both of them used it to measure how badly he wanted to stay in bed with her.
The screenshot takes twice because the first one blurs. I wipe my face with my wrist, send the second, and keep going to the message beneath it from the next morning.
She mad?
No. She never pushes.
I keep staring at the answer. He knew I trusted him enough not to push, and he counted on it.
I search the dates around my fertile window even though the thought makes my skin crawl.
Sasha tells him to come over on the same evening Declan arrived home after midnight with rain in his hair.
I remember waking when he sat on the edge of our bed.
He took my hand, kissed the split skin across my thumb, and said he had missed me.
I believed him enough to pull him down. That night may be when we made this baby.
If it wasn’t, it was close enough that I’ll never remember any of it without wondering whether he had just left her.
My hand settles over my lower stomach before I can stop it.
This morning, I believed our child had been made during one of the nights Declan came home because he wanted me.
Now I know he could want me and still come home from her.
He could leave Sasha, wash her from his skin, and use the tenderness I trusted to keep his place beside me.
The baby wasn’t conceived while we were repairing our marriage.
Declan was only acting like my husband well enough to keep me from seeing what he did when he left.
I want to throw the burner into the street. Instead, I photograph the whole week.
My hands begin moving again. Search terms. Dates.
Transfers. Images. The image folder holds photographs of pages I can’t interpret, route sheets and entry logs and a cabinet standing open under somebody’s hand, so I photograph the folder the way it appears on the screen and write Cruz’s name beside it in my notes instead of pretending I understand what I’m looking at.
The light through the garage window has gone orange while I’ve been sitting here, and his truck still hasn’t come.
I forward the message archive to the new email, export the call log, and photograph the device information.
Then I remove nothing. I don’t block Sasha, answer her, or let either of them know what I have.
I place the phone in a plastic freezer bag, write the date across it with a permanent marker, and take it inside with me.
I move half of the available checking balance into the new account and save the receipt. I take only half. He can’t call that theft, no matter how badly he wants to.
Upstairs, I finish packing. Shoes go into a box.
Toiletries go into grocery bags. I take my laptop, chargers, medications, and the two books on my nightstand.
Declan’s shirt lies across the foot of the bed where I left it after folding laundry.
I pick it up, smell the detergent I buy, and remember Sasha wearing his hoodie over bare legs. The shirt drops back onto his side.
The second suitcase closes after I kneel on it.
I carry it downstairs one stair at a time, the hard case beneath my arm and the burner inside my coat.
On the way through the kitchen I take his mother’s jar from beside the sink and set it in the box of kitchen things by the door, still shut, and close the flap over it before I can ask myself why it’s coming.
By the front door, I line my shoes beside the luggage before realizing I am arranging the hall for him.
I kick the shoes into the open suitcase instead.
One heel strikes the wall and leaves a mark near the baseboard. He can keep that too.
An engine comes hard around the corner. Declan’s truck clears the turn too fast, brakes at the curb, and jumps the edge of the drive before straightening.
He kills the engine without closing the garage.
I hear the door slam, his boots cross the concrete, and the front lock catches once before his key finds it.
I move between him and the bags. The burner fills my bandaged hand, black plastic against white cloth, and when the front door opens, Declan looks at my coat, the luggage, and the phone he buried beneath a rag. Whatever explanation he rehearsed on the drive disappears.