15. Declan
DECLAN
Gage parks outside the safehouse and takes my truck keys before Avery gets out of his SUV.
The order came from Cruz. I’m not to leave with her, follow her, choose another location, or enter a room first. Last week I lied about a deputy while swearing I had dismantled every hidden watch.
No one trusts my word anymore, and they shouldn’t.
The house sits behind bare trees with evidence tape removed from the front door and a new lock beneath the handle.
I met Sasha here the first time because the porch couldn’t be seen from the road.
Avery crosses the same porch carrying the archive case against her coat.
She doesn’t hesitate at the threshold. Her pause comes after Gage unlocks the door and the smell reaches us: stale coffee, closed rooms, the cleaning spray Bones used on the kitchen counter after fingerprint powder stained it black.
Underneath that is the sweet candle Sasha burned because she said the house smelled like old men.
I bought the candle on the way here one Thursday.
Avery had texted me a photograph of burnt pancakes and told me I owed her dinner when I got home.
I stopped at a store for Sasha instead, chose the first scent she liked, then ate Avery’s ruined pancakes at midnight and told her the club kept me late.
The jar remains beside the sink with a strip of evidence tape across the lid.
“That candle,” Avery says with her coat still buttoned. “Did she bring it?”
“No. I bought it.”
“Why?”
I could say Sasha complained. Avery isn’t asking what words came out of her mouth. “I wanted her comfortable here.”
Avery sets the archive case on the kitchen table where Sasha once spread route sheets beneath her elbows. “Did you buy candles for the house we lived in?”
“You hated them after your mother got sick. The fake flower smells made you nauseous.”
“You remembered.” She turns the taped jar until the price label faces me. “You remembered what made me sick while you picked a smell for her.”
“Yes.”
The answer hurts her. I see it in the way she leaves the candle crooked instead of aligning it with the backsplash, and I refuse the urge to add that I didn’t compare them in the store.
The truth is worse. I remembered Avery in the aisle and paid for the candle with her text still on my screen.
For six months, my love for my wife stayed where it was and excused nothing I did with it.
Avery opens the cabinet above the sink. One blue ring circles the shelf where my mother’s mug sat before Bones bagged it.
The other mugs are gone, but years of dust have collected around the place Sasha kept that one.
Avery touches the shelf with her bandaged index finger, then rubs the grey mark against her thumb.
“Who took it from our house?”
“I did.”
“Did she ask for it?”
“She saw a picture of it on my phone and asked why I never used it. I told her about my mother. The next week I brought it here.”
Avery closes the cabinet. “You wouldn’t let me put it in the dishwasher.”
“I know.”
“I washed that thing by hand for six years. Your mother drank coffee from it in my kitchen while I fixed the blanket around her legs. Then you carried it out of our house so Sasha could feel important.”
I want to tell her my mother liked her. That Avery was the last person Ma asked for before the medicine took her voice.
That the mug never meant as much in Sasha’s hands as it did when Avery set it beside my breakfast. Every answer would ask Avery to remember being loved while standing in the room where I used that love like it couldn’t run out.
“Yes,” I say. “I wanted Sasha to know I trusted her with something nobody touched. I knew you were the one who protected it. I took it anyway.”
Gage waits on the porch with the door open behind him. He can hear every answer, and humiliation burns through me even though I chose the audience when I put prospects outside a bedroom door. Avery looks toward Gage once, then walks deeper into the house. I follow only because she asked me here.
The bathroom is narrow enough that I have to stay in the hall while she opens the medicine cabinet.
A clean square marks where Sasha’s birth-control packet sat, with another where her face cream stood and a taller space on the shower shelf where she kept shampoo.
Avery photographed all of it on discovery day.
She knows the answers. Today she wants them in my voice.
“The shampoo?”
“Sasha brought it.”
“The toothbrush cup?”
“I bought it after she left hers on the sink.”
“You drove to a store because her toothbrush made the counter look messy?”
“Yes.”
“You spent six years putting mine back in the drawer because you hated seeing it beside the sink.” Avery takes the empty cup from the evidence box Bones left beneath the cabinet and places it where it used to stand. “You said it made the bathroom look dirty.”
“I did.”
“Did hers make it look dirty?”
“No.” It isn’t fair, but it’s true. “Here, I didn’t care what she left out. I knew nobody important would see it.”
Avery turns toward me so fast the cup strikes the mirror. “Nobody important?”
“That’s what I told myself then. Not what I believe now.” I keep both hands where she can see them and make myself finish. “I treated this house like it wasn’t part of our marriage because you didn’t know it existed. I thought whatever happened here couldn’t touch the home I had with you.”
“It was already touching our home. You came back from this bathroom and put your toothbrush beside mine.” She takes the cup away again and drops it into the evidence box. “How many times did you shower here before coming home?”
I counted while writing the timeline. The number doesn’t include the mornings I went to the clubhouse first or the times Sasha and I met somewhere else. “Twenty-one.”
“How many times did you shower in our bathroom after you had sex with her and before you got into our bed?”
“Nine.”
Avery presses one hand beneath her coat, over the place our child is growing, and the movement makes me want to kneel even though she would hate me making a show of it. “Were you afraid I’d smell her?”
“Yes.”
“So you knew she came home with you.”
There is no answer that hurts less than the one she already found. “I knew. I washed, changed clothes, checked my phone, and put my key in our door.”
“You kissed me.”
“Yes.”
“You slept with me.”
“Yes.”
“You let me believe I knew what I was saying yes to.”
The hallway wall digs into my shoulder while I stay outside the bathroom.
I thought confession meant giving every date and sexual detail.
Avery’s question is simpler and worse: she trusted the husband who climbed into bed with her, and I knew she would refuse that man if she saw where he had been.
“I knew you wouldn’t touch me if I told you.
I wanted to come home to you, so I kept it from you. ”
She looks down at the bandage on her hand, picking at one lifted corner until it threatens to open.
My fingers know how much ointment belongs beneath it.
I’ve applied that cream after washing dishes, during winter drives, and in bed while she complained it made the sheets greasy.
Wanting to fix the bandage now is another habit I can’t trust. I stay in the hall while Avery smooths it herself.
“Show me the office,” she says.
The cabinet takes up most of the back wall, metal doors hanging open and empty file slots exposed.
Avery removes her coat, lays it across the desk, and rolls the sleeves of her navy blouse above the bandages.
She used to do that before reading contracts with me, preparing her hands for work as if a page could be fought.
With Sasha, I wanted the help hidden so she could keep admiring me.
Avery saw exactly where I struggled and never thought less of me.
Avery knew the worst of me and never thought less of me.
I still chose Sasha because hiding was easier.
She checks the labels from the bottom shelf upward, comparing each metal divider to the copied index. I stand beside the door until she points at the reading stool beneath the desk. “Who brought that?”
“I did.”
“From where?”
“Our garage.”
Her attention moves to the chipped green paint. My mother used that stool at the workbench when her legs became unreliable. Avery put rubber feet on it so it wouldn’t scratch the kitchen floor during Tuesday readings. “You told me Bones borrowed it.”
“He didn’t know I used his name.”
“Where did Sasha sit?”
“On the stool when we were alone. Beside me.”
“Did you tell her why the rubber feet were there?”
“No.”
“Did she know it came from our house?”
“Yes. She laughed about the paint and asked whether I stole it from a school. I told her my mother used it.”
Avery crouches to inspect the underside, then stops when nausea makes her close her eyes. I move one foot into the room before catching myself. “Do you need Gage? Water is in the kitchen.”
“I need you not to make my pregnancy an exit from this conversation.” She waits until the nausea passes, braces one hand on the desk, and stands on her own while I keep my hands where they are. “When did she first read for you?”
“Late April. She saw me stall on a shipping manifest and took it from my hand.”
“What did she say?”
“Nothing at first. She read the line, asked whether the shipment number matched, and kept going. Afterward she said she could handle papers whenever I needed.”
“And you liked that.”
“Yes.” I look at the stool rather than ask Avery to drag the rest from me. “She noticed before I admitted it. She didn’t laugh. I felt relieved, and I liked that she looked impressed by everything else I did.”
“I never laughed at you.”
“I know.”
“Then why did her reading feel better?”