There’s a foot of space between us that feels like a canyon.
The bourbon glass is on the bar cart, half finished.
The ice has melted.
The house is quiet except for the hum of the air conditioning and the distant sound of a horse in the barn.
"This doesn't change anything," I say.
"I know."
"You still lied. You still took her from me."
"I know."
"And I still haven't decided what I'm going to do about it."
She opens her eyes and turns her head to look at me.
The tears she was holding earlier are gone.
What's left is exhaustion and something else—something quiet and resigned, like a woman who just gave herself to a man she wronged and knows it solved nothing but couldn't stop herself any more than he could.
"What do you want me to say, Harlan? That I regret it? I do. Every day for twenty years I've regretted it. That I wish I'd told you? I do. That I know sorry isn't enough?" She pulls her knees up. Wraps her arms around them. Makes herself small in a way that has nothing to do with fear and everything to do with the weight of what she's carrying. "I can give you all of that and it still won't give you those twenty years back."
"No," I say. "It won't."
Silence. The kind that lives in old houses after something irreversible has happened inside them.
"Where are you staying?" I ask. Flat. Presidential. Like I'm asking a stranger about logistics.
"I don't know. I drove straight here. I don't—" She stops. Regroups. "I'll find a hotel. Or a rental. I'm not leaving Sharp until I know Presley is?—"
"Presley stays on the ranch. She's got a job and living quarters. She's doing well, and I'm not punishing her for what you did."
"I'm not asking you to punish her."
"Good."
Another silence.
I stand up and find my shirt.
I put it on even though half the buttons are gone.
She watches me from the floor, and for a second—one second—she looks exactly like the girl in the dive bar.
Sitting on the floor, looking up at me, uncertain and certain at the same time.
I kill the thought before it grows.
"Get a room in town. Come back tomorrow. We're not done talking."
"Harlan—"
"We're not done, Marlena. Not even close. But I can't look at you right now without—" I stop. Because the end of that sentence is eitherwanting to kill youorwanting to touch you againand I don't know which one is true and the fact that I can't tell the difference is the whole goddamn problem.
"Come back tomorrow," I say again. "And bring everything. Every document, every record, every photograph of my daughter that I missed. Every birthday, every school picture, every—" My voice gives out. I turn away from her so she doesn't see what's on my face. "I want to see what I missed. All of it."
