Except she doesn’t walk me to the door.She stays at the counter, coffee in hand, smile still on, and asks me what else the house needs like she’s planning renovations instead of a hostage situation.
I take the coffee.I don’t sit down.
I think about what I heard.
Not the three words.The other thing—the argument.The rhythm of it.His voice spiking, testing, probing.Her voice steady, never rising, never breaking.She won that fight.I could hear it in the way his voice dropped at the end, the way hers didn’t.
But here’s what I keep coming back to.
He had the energy to argue.He had the energy to yell, to threaten, to test every crack in her composure.He’s strapped to a bed with cracked ribs and raw wrists and he’s using what strength he has to tear her down.
I’ve met men like that.Different packaging, same defect.Ryan McCall uses his fists.This guy uses his words.The damage lands in different places but the math is the same—a man who has something in front of him and can’t stop destroying it.
I’m not saying she’s right.I’m saying she kidnapped a man who’s not worth the rope.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I say.Set the mug down.
“Thanks for the soundproofing,” she says.Still smiling.Still selling.
I pick up my toolbox and head for the door.
“Lock up behind me.”
“See you around, Luke.”
I drive home the long way.Not thinking about whether I should have helped the man upstairs.Not thinking about right and wrong.Thinking about the way a man who’s being kept alive by a woman who loves him can’t find a single reason to be grateful.
I’ve held a man’s hand flat on a workbench and used a hammer for less.
I turn the radio on.
First time in two years.
I don’t find a station.Just static.But the silence was worse.
30
Marin
The grocery store is called Foster’s, which sounds like a pub and smells like one too—stale air, fluorescent lighting, and the faint desperation of people who’ve been shopping at the same place for thirty years because the nearest alternative is forty minutes away.
I grab a cart.The wheel wobbles immediately.I am not surprised.
I need eggs, bread, water, protein bars, more ibuprofen, and something that passes for a vegetable so I can pretend I’m feeding Charles a balanced diet.I also need trash bags, paper towels, and bleach, which is a shopping list that would raise eyebrows in any true crime documentary but barely registers in a town where people buy ammunition next to the canned corn.
I’m in the bread aisle when I hear her.
“Marin!”
Mrs.Mather materializes the way she always does—suddenly, completely, like she’s been standing behind the display rack waiting for her cue.Quilted vest.Silver hair.Eyes like a surveillance camera with a subscription to the local newsletter.The town’s first line of offense and defense when it comes to information.
Perfect.
She eyes me like she’s waiting for an invitation to pounce.So I give her one.
“Mrs.Mather,” I smile, wide and weary.“I meant to stop by.It’s been a week, hasn’t it?”
“I was beginning to think you’d gone and died in that house,” she says, pulling her vest tighter like my presence dropped the temperature ten degrees.“We all had bets.”
