"I know."
"You're being cold."
"I'm being careful."
"There's a difference."
"Not from where I'm sitting."
She exhales. Small. Goes into the office. Closes the door soft.
I stand in the kitchen and look at the chair she just left.
I go outsideand chop wood.
It's not winter. The pile doesn't need it. I chop wood because my arms need a job that isn't holding her and my back needs to hurt by the end of the day or I'm going to do something stupid like go into that office and tell her things I'm not ready to tell her yet.
I swing the axe.
Listen to her voice through the cracked office window at ten o'clock, steady, journalist Simone, the one who doesn't miss. She's good. She's measured. She's doing her job.
I listen and I swing the axe.
I think about Aisha Khoury.
Not the dying part. I've got that one memorized. I'm thinking about the before part. Twenty four hours before the ambush we were at a safe house north of Amman and she was on the phone with her oldest kid, a seven year old named Kareem, and he was crying about a soccer game and she was laughing and saying things to him in Arabic that I didn't understand then. LaterTamer told me she was telling her sonI will be home before the sun rises two more times, habibi. Count the suns.
She missed one sun.
I swing the axe.
The thing about being six years out from a thing is you think you've metabolized it. You think you've done the work, put it in a box, closed the box. Then a woman in bourbon colored sweaters walks into your cabin and you find out the box was never closed. It was just quiet.
I swing the axe.
A voice behind me says my name.
I didn't hear her come out.
"Gray."
I set the axe down. Turn.
She's in the doorway in a jacket that's too light for the temperature, phone in her hand, hair loose now because she pulled the bun out at some point.
"I just got off the Globe."
"How'd it go."
"Fine. They want a follow-up piece. Long form. Five thousand words on the laundering operation. Byline, feature spread, a month to file."
"Good for you."
"Gray."
"I mean it. That's a big one."
"They want me to work it from Toronto."
