“Soundproofing’s not cheap,” I say.
“I know.I don’t care.I just need it done.Sooner the better.”A pause.She catches herself.Dials it back.“I mean—whenever you have the time.No rush.”
No rush.But also sooner the better.Women like Marin don’t know how to need things quietly.
“I can come take a look,” I say.“Tomorrow work?”
“Tomorrow’s perfect.”Relief bleeding through the polish.“Thank you.Really.”
She hangs up.No goodbye.Just the click of disconnection.
I pocket the phone.
Behind me, Ryan McCall is still curled on the tile.Naked.Broken.Breathing in short little sips like the air itself hurts.He’ll heal.Ribs always do.
But he’ll remember.
I walk out the way I came in.No one notices.No one stops me.
It’s not murder.
Just a message.
Sometimes, that’s all it takes.
16
Marin
Ihaven’t slept in two days.
Not because of the house, though the house deserves its share of blame—every pipe groans, every floorboard has an opinion, and something in the walls scratches at three a.m.like it’s trying to get out.
No.The reason I haven’t slept is Charles.
Charles, who is still in a heap at the bottom of the basement stairs where gravity and I left him, and who has decided that the appropriate response to this situation is tomoan.Not scream.Not yell.Moan.Low, steady, constant—like a dishwasher stuck on the rinse cycle.Every forty-five minutes, give or take.I’ve timed it.I’ve actually timed it, which tells you everything you need to know about where I am mentally.
I come downstairs with coffee I don’t remember making and stand over him.My ankle throbs on every step.The gash on my shin has scabbed over into something that looks like modern art and catches on everything—jeans, blankets, the edge of the basement stairs like the house wants a second taste.But I’m healing.Slowly.Dramatically.Much like this relationship.
“Charles.”
He groans.
“Charles, I need you to understand something.I am trying to save this relationship.But if you don’t stop making that sound, I am going to lose my mind, and then neither of us gets what we want.”
He opens one eye.Bloodshot.Accusatory.He’s got a bruise across his forehead from where he met the wall on the way down, and his left arm is cradled against his ribs like he’s holding himself together.Which, to be fair, he might be.
“I think something’s broken,” he says.
“Something is always broken, Charles.That’s why we’re here.”
He closes the eye.The moaning resumes before I reach the top of the stairs.
I pour a second coffee.Or maybe it’s a third.The mug says LIVE LAUGH LOVE, which came with the house, and which I keep using because irony is all I have left.
I sit at the kitchen table and stare at the window.Somewhere across the road, Mrs.Mather is in her house, probably pressing a glass to the wall like a Cold War spy in a quilted vest.I thought I heard some noise last night.Moaning.Maybe screaming?She said it like she was making conversation.She was not making conversation.She was building a case.
That was two days ago, and I can still feel her eyes cataloging the entryway over my shoulder.
