“A kiss. And he was touching her.”
“Touching?”
“Do you want me to draw you a picture?”
“Not really. Were you watching them? What were you doing?”
I can’t quite believe his reaction. I’ve told him his wife is cheating, and he’s asking for details.
“I followed them.”
“Ah.” He says this like it means something. “Are you certain about what you saw? Last night, you were?—”
“Christ, Bradley! It’s pretty hard to mistake. And I didn’t feel drunk. I was just sick.” I go inside and retrieve Grace’s diary entry from under my mattress. In for a penny, I think, in for a pound. “She even wrote about it in her diary.”
He reads slowly, then looks up at me, still skeptical. I can tell that he’s desperately searching for an explanation.
“Where did you get this?”
“Where do you think? The attic.”
“You shouldn’t go up there.” He hands me the paper. “You have to put this back. She’ll notice it’s gone, and there will be hell to pay. Seriously. I’m surprised she hasn’t already.”
I take the paper and return it underneath the mattress. When I go back outside, I find Bradley slowly, creakily standing up, as if the revelation has added decades to his life. He looks into his glass, empties it in one go, then smashes it onto the veranda floor.
I let out a scream, and this breaks the spell. Bradley runs his palm over his face, swears, and mumbles an apology. “I'd better pick this up.”
“Leave it,” I say. “It’s dark. I’ll get it in the morning.”
“You’ll pierce an artery in the morning, you mean.”
I touch his shoulder. “Please. Come inside. You need to make me dinner.”
“I thought I was your guest.”
He looks out into the storm, frowning, and all I can think about is how much I’d like to run my hands through his neat hair, his sharp jawline, his shoulders, his stomach?—
“Your host is a little tipsy to manage the camping stove, I’m afraid.”
“Fine. Let me whip something up.”
A few minutes later, he’s cooking one of the freeze-dried camping meals I’ve been living on for the last week. As I sit on the bed and watch, I’m reminded of the hundreds of nights that I watched Neil do this very thing. But it never felt like this. Every moment I spend in this man’s presence feels charged, as if the wrong comment or touch will cause us to combust.
“You don’t need to worry about her, you know,” he says, stirring the pot carefully.
“It’s fine.”
“But that’s what I’m saying. Grace doesn’t live entirely in this world. She thinks ordinary life is boring, so she engineers her life to make it more dramatic.”
“I don’t think she’ll like me telling you the truth.”
“She won’t hurt a fly, literally. She’s a vegan pacifist. She believes in the sanctity of life.”
He hands me a glass—not wine this time, but a gin and tonic. Where did that come from? He must have brought a hip flask with him. It’s strong, but I’m too tipsy to protest. He clinks my glass.
“Hair of the dog,” he says, and downs it in one. I hesitate, then do the same. He immediately pours a refill.
“She hurt you,” I say.
