“I’m going for a run.”

“It’s cold out today.”

“Carry on. Do whatever you do during the day when I’m not here.” You tousled my hair like you always did to Violet and left the kitchen to find your running shoes. You never went for runs anymore.

Something didn’t feel right. My head was light. I had an urge to call your mother. She was walking the dog when she answered.

I told her I wanted to talk about the holidays early, to go over the plans for their visit. They were to book a flight for December twenty-second and we’d take Violet skating the next day with your sister. I asked about gift ideas for your father. We talked through who should cook what for the dinner.

“I know this will be hard again,” she said. “Without Sam.”

“I miss him.”

“Me, too.”

“Helen,” I said, wondering if I should have just said good-bye. “Fox told me this morning that he resigned from his job. Did you know he was thinking of leaving?”

“No, he didn’t mention it.” She paused. “If money is a problem, you know we can always help. I don’t want you to worry about that.”

“It’s not that. It’s— I feel like I don’t know him anymore. He’s grown so . . . distant.” I held my breath and rolled my eyes to myself. I didn’t like talking to her about you, but I was desperate for some kind of reassurance. “I feel like something else might be going on.”

“Oh, I don’t think so, honey. No.” Her tone suggested she understood what I was inferring. “You’re still grieving parents, Blythe. This is a hard time for both of you. Maybe Fox is struggling more than you realize.” She gave me space to agree, but I didn’t speak. “Be patient with him.”

“Please don’t mention to him that I called, okay?” I rubbed my temples, trying to ease the tension.

“Of course.” She changed the topic back to which day they should fly home and I watched for you from the window of the living room.

* * *

? ? ?

Your laptop was on and I knew your password. Your desk looked the same, tools scattered, a project in progress left wherever we’d interrupted you the night before. Nothing looked as though it were winding down, nothing looked different. I opened your in-box and scrolled through the messages. The email from your boss wasn’t hard to find: I’m glad we both agree this is the best outcome given the nature of the incident. I’m sorry it had to end this way. Perhaps we both could have used better discretion in how things were handled. Cynthia will be in touch with the details of the severance we agreed on.

There was an incident of some kind. Severance—you had been fired.

I opened an email sent that morning from your assistant. You hadn’t read it yet. She’d written only, I just met with HR. Call me.

I went to Violet’s room and picked up the unicorn pencil and eraser she gave her. I smelled the rubber, as though it were possible to find some kind of confirmation. I put it back on her shelf and lay down on her unmade bed.

I clutched my pounding chest with both hands. The late nights at the office. The rejection when I touched you. The way your fingers had tapped the table as you lied to me. I closed my eyes and smelled Violet’s pungent sleepiness on the pillow.

“I hate you,” I whispered. To you both. I hated both of you. I wanted only Sam. If he was there, everything would have been okay. I cried until I heard you open the front door. Your shoes dropped on the tiles. Your feet hit the stairs. I lay still and you walked past Violet’s bedroom door and into the bathroom for a shower. I’d left the email open on your laptop. You’d find it twenty minutes later and not say a word to me.

58

The next morning, I waited outside for a while before I came back in the house after drop-off. I wanted you to be gone, but the house still smelled too strongly like you. You were somewhere. I didn’t call for you. I shut the bathroom door and got into the shower and I scrubbed myself hard. Every piece of me. I stood under the showerhead until the water ran cold.

I could hear you on the other side of the door, the sounds I had heard nearly every morning of our life together. Your drawers opening and closing. Your fresh underwear. Your undershirt. And then the closet. Your dress shirt—you must have been trying to impress someone that day. The metal clips on the hangers clanged. Your suit slipped off the heavy wooden shoulders and onto your arms.

And then the bathroom door opened. I was naked. You stared at my body differently that morning; the hanging skin that had held your children; the breasts those children had sucked dry; the patch of scraggly pubic hair that hadn’t been cared for in years—all there, for the eyes of a man who had something better, younger, firmer to look at. I imagined her skin was smooth and free of purple veins and enduring hairs. I watched you watch me. And I wondered what this body meant to you now. Was it just a vessel? The ship that got you here, father of one beautiful daughter and a son you’d barely known?

You saw me watching you and then you looked away. You knew you’d lingered too long on my naked body. You knew that I knew. You reached out for the towel on the hook and you handed it to me.

We didn’t say a word to each other that morning. You were gone until ten at night. And then you came home and fucked me so hard that I bled. I had begged you to. I imagined you’d fucked her that night, too. But I wanted to feel used, in a mechanical type of way that made my body feel separate from who I was. I wanted to feel like a barge in the sea. Rusted, trusted, dented.