No blood.No bruises.Just a conversation and a USB drive.
In the truck, I check my phone.There’s an email from Marin.
Luke—the porch railing on the south side is loose.Also the kitchen faucet drips.When can you come by?—Marin
She got my email from the payment transfer receipt.I figured it was only a matter of time before she used it.
Two jobs.Neither one urgent.Neither one something she couldn’t live with for another month.But she’s already scheduling me back into that house like it’s a standing appointment.
I read the email again.
When can you come by?
Notcanyou come by.When.Like it’s already decided.Like the only variable is timing.
I put the phone down.Start the truck.
I should write back something professional.A quote.A timeline.The kind of response a contractor sends when he’s treating a client like a client.
Instead I write:Tomorrow work?
She responds in eleven seconds.
Perfect.
I pull out of the parking lot.The sun’s fully up now, burning through the windshield.I think about Celeste on the rooftop, crying into her yoga mat.I think about Dana, who’ll never know my name.
None of it matters.
Tomorrow I’ll be back in that house.
32
Marin
Idecide today is the day we have a real conversation.
Not the yelling.Not the threats.Not the legal posturing or the theatrical displays of suffering.A real conversation, the kind I’ve been planning since I loaded him into that trailer—calm, rational, two adults discussing the future of their relationship like civilized people who happen to be in a slightly unconventional living situation.
I shower.Blow-dry my hair.Put on mascara for the first time in a week.I make two coffees—his black, the way he likes it—and arrange everything on the tray with the kind of attention I used to give client presentations.Water.Coffee.Toast with butter, not dry.The ibuprofen in a small dish instead of the bottle because details matter.
I even put a flower in a glass.A wildflower I picked from the yard.It’s wilting already but it’s the thought.
I carry the tray upstairs.Open the door.
Charles is awake.Lucid.Watching me with the flat, patient attention of a man who’s been planning something for hours.
“Good morning,” I say.Bright.Warm.The voice I used on difficult clients—the ones who needed to feel heard before they’d sign anything.
“Good morning,” he says back.Which is already more than I usually get.
He’s different this morning.Settled.His wrists are resting in the cuffs instead of pulling against them.He’s stopped asking to be untied.Stopped demanding.Stopped fighting.
That should make me happy.Instead it makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
A Charles who fights, I can handle.A Charles who stops fighting is a Charles who’s found another way out.
But I want this to work.So I ignore the alarm bells blaring in my head and sit down.
