She needs to vomit again, get rid of the remnants of cheeseburger still left in her belly. But instead she goes into her little office, because the only bathroom in the house is stuck right between the two bedrooms, and Dean is probably awake, waiting for her, and he’d stand outside the bathroom, head cocked to one side, nostrils flaring, straining for the scent of guilt.
She can’t do it in the kitchen, although the sink would do in a pinch, because Dean will know, somehow he’ll find out no matter how many times she rinses or squirts bleach into the basin, and it’ll be like before, when she was doing it every day, and there’ll be questions, or an argument, and she’s not up for it, not tonight. So she sits in her office, swallowing the bile rising in her gullet. It’s a small room, not even a room but more of a nook, only enough space for a small desk and a chair, and a single shelf overflowing with books.
The blinds in her office are still twisted open, and sitting in the dark she has a perfect view into the neighbor’s kitchen window. A couple lives there, no kids. They must not have much money, because there aren’t any window coverings, not even sheets tacked up as makeshift curtains. Or they don’t care who’s looking in. They’re in the kitchen now, at the big tiled island that runs down the center of the room, and she can’t tell if they’re talking or only standing there, in the middle of an intimate moment they don’t realize is being shared with an audience. She’s seen them before, spent lots of time watching them, although they never do anything especially interesting. But they seem pleasant enough. Normal. They like to touch, to stand beside each other and hold hands, to eat dinner and pat each other companionably on the thigh. Watching them makes her feel like she did when she was a girl, playing with the dollhouse she’d gotten for Christmas, making the toys go through the mundane motions of a drama-free existence. The mother, cooking dinner and rearranging the furniture. The father, mowing the lawn and taking out the garbage. Cliché and boring, but somehow soothing.
She fires up her computer, opens up a blank document. The cursor blinks on the white page, waiting.
She types: Jacky Seever has spent the last seven years in prison, but the city of Denver is still being haunted by his crimes. On December 1, 2015, Carrie Simms, Seever’s only surviving victim, was discovered in her home, the victim of a brutal murder …
It’s good, she thinks. Fast. But good.
She emails it off to Corbin, then waits. Refreshes her email a few times, although it’s unnecessary. Corbin never seems to sleep, and he’s quick at answering emails. He hasn’t changed in the last year—four minutes after she sends the email, she has a response.
This is good, the email says. Very good. I’ll pull some strings, run it in tomorrow’s edition. What else you got?
And then, the last line, which makes her heart leap up into her throat:
Welcome back.
*
Sammie and Dean are a couple who like to play games. Not sex games—after this many years of marriage there isn’t much of that sort of fun left in them. And they don’t play board games, or card games. Sometimes there are mind games, but that’s to be expected, especially with them.
It’s really just one game they play, and it’s not even all that often anymore, not since they’re getting older and tired, and the few minutes before sleep are often a blur of face washing and teeth brushing. But they used to play it all the time, late at night, after the doors had all been locked and the lights turned off and the house was dead quiet, except for the occasional murmurs from the furnace. It’s always easier to play the game at night, when they are nothing more than two disembodied voices pushing through the dark. In the dark, they don’t have to see each other.
This is a game of questions and answers, of endless possibilities. Sometimes they’re hypothetical questions, sometimes they’re not. They’ve played it since before they were married, teasing and laughing, poking at each other and ripping away the sheets so the cool night air would make their bodies ripple with gooseflesh. But sometimes this game turns serious, and they both get upset and angry, the bedroom seems too warm, even with the ceiling fan whirring ceaselessly above their heads.
“Are you still in love with me?” Dean asks. She’d come to bed an hour before, after getting the email from Corbin. She’d snuck into bed, thinking that Dean was asleep, but now she can hear the flicker of his eyelids in the dark, up and down, the wet kissing sound they make as they open and shut.
“What?” she asks, turning over, yanking the blanket out from where it’s twisted under her arm.
“Are you still in love with me?”
“Why would you ask that?”
“Because I want to know.”
“I’m married to you, aren’t I?”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asks. “Not everyone who gets married is in love.”
“If I didn’t love you, I’d leave. I’d go find another man to be with.”