Chapter 7
Chapter Seven
There's a version of my husband that only exists after ten at night, and I have learned to wait up for him.
Tonight, he gets in a little after nine.
His jacket is draped over his arm, the day still on him.
Whatever Seattle wanted from him, it took everything.
I can see it in the way he sets his keys on the counter without a sound.
David handles objects gently when he's tired, as if the world has turned fragile and he's the only one who has noticed.
“Don’t worry about dinner,” he says.
"I already didn't."
He laughs, and it comes up from somewhere real. Luna is at his knees doing her whole routine. He crouches and takes her face in both hands. “I’ve missed you too,” he tells her.
So we eat toast standing at the counter at half past nine like students. We open a bottle of wine that costs more than it should. It's an ordinary night, and I hold onto it with both hands.
Later, we end up on the sofa with only a lamp on, my feet in his lap. The glass doors are closed against the heat. The AC is working overtime. Out past the terrace, the aviary has gone quiet. Somewhere across the water, a boat moves late and slow.
David works my ankle with his thumb without being asked. He’s always done this.
"So, about tomorrow," he says. "I told Helen seven thirty for dinner. She'll be bringing Nate. Fair warning. Nate will explain his job to you for forty minutes."
"I like Nate."
"Nobody likes Nate. You're being too kind."
"He's harmless."
"He's an ethics consultant, Mal. He's paid to be harmless." He tips his head back against the cushions and closes his eyes. "Just, if she asks how you're doing, you don't have to be brave about it. You can just say fine and let it go."
"I always say fine."
"I know. It's very convincing." He opens one eye. "Do you know that you say it in a different voice? Slightly higher. Like this." He does an impression of me that is unforgivably accurate. "Fine."
"I don’t sound like that."
"You sound exactly like that. Doctor Blue could hear it a mile off."
And there it is.
It's such an old joke that it's stopped being a joke and turned into a piece of furniture. He says it into the dark without even thinking. My chest goes tight with love.
Two years ago I came up out of an anesthetic in a room I didn't recognize, in a state I couldn't name, and I couldn't tell anyone who I was. I knew. It’s just that the words wouldn't assemble.
There was a man leaning over me in blue scrubs, his voice very calm. He told me where I was, what had happened to me, what he'd done to fix my arm. Then he told me again, and again, however many times I asked.
I couldn't hold on to his name. So for four days I called him Doctor Blue. He never corrected me.
He'd come in on his rounds and say good morning. I'd say good morning, Doctor Blue, and he would carry on as though a grown woman calling him by a color was the most reasonable thing in the building.
That's who he was to me before he was anything else. He was the voice that told me what was real when I had nothing else to go on.
People did the arithmetic on us later and decided what we were.
"Doctor Blue," I say, "can go to hell."
"Doctor Blue put your radius back together with a plate and eight screws and he'd like some recognition."
"He'd like a medal?”
"Sure would," David agrees. My ankle gets a squeeze. We don't say anything for a while, and it's the good kind.
The lamp buzzes faintly. The heat of the day still hasn't lifted off the house. I'm happy, and happiness makes me careless.
So I say it.
"Can I tell you something strange?"
"Always."
"That package. The one that came to us by mistake." I keep my voice light. I keep my eyes on the ceiling. "There were old Oregon murder cases inside. Clippings. I read them before I realized they weren't mine."
David's thumb slows on my foot.
"And?"
"I can't shake them," I say. "They were spread over years, different counties, different papers. But they felt connected. Like whoever wrote each one never knew they were looking at pieces of the same thing."
His thumb keeps moving on my ankle. He doesn't stop, and he doesn't stiffen. Whatever my words do to him, none of it reaches his hand.
"That's our neighbor's business," he says. "Not ours."
"That's not really the point I'm making."
"No, I know." He pauses. "But it's Oregon."
"So?"
"We've talked about this before." He says it too smoothly. "Listen, I just don't love that every time something pulls you back in, it's Oregon, that's all. We left that behind, right? That was the idea."
"I'm not talking about the crash, David."
"I didn't say you were."
"You did a bit."
He laughs, but it's the wrong laugh. It's the courteous one he uses on people at hospital functions. Then he's moving, leaning forward, reaching for the wine, and his voice changes gear so fast I almost don't catch the seam.
"Oh, that reminds me. Sophie sent me a photo of the new dog," he says. "You have to see this cutie. She put a bandana on it."
And then he's got his phone out, holding it up, showing me a dog in a bandana. It is, admittedly, a wonderful dog. I laugh, and we are past it.
Past it in about a second and a half.
It stays with me into the dark. I lie awake beside him, the heat pressing on the house, Luna's tail thumping once against the floor in her sleep.
It's not that he changed the subject. Everyone changes the subject.
It's that the moment Oregon came up, he didn't have to look for a way out.
It was already in his hand.