Chapter 6

Paul did not show up that night.

I sat in the living room with the lights off, the VOID-stamped page on the coffee table in front of me, the phone dark beside it. Kira had gone to stay with my father, who had insisted on driving her to a hotel. "She needs space," he'd said, "and you need not to be looking at her while you think."

He wasn't wrong.

My father called around midnight.

"He's not picking up," he said. "I drove past our house. His car is there. The lights are on in the bedroom."

"Then he's hiding," I said.

"He's hiding," my father agreed. "Marla — what are you going to do?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'm going to sleep, I think. Or try to."

"Call me if you need anything."

"I will."

I didn't sleep. I lay in our bed — my bed, now, I supposed — staring at the ceiling, hearing the house settle around me, thinking about the man I'd married and the man he'd turned out to be.

Morning came slowly, gray and wet. I was sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee when I heard the key in the lock.

The front door opened. Paul walked in.

He looked worse than I'd expected. His jaw was bruised, purple and yellow spreading across the skin in an ugly bloom. His eyes were bloodshot. His shirt was rumpled — he must have slept in it.

He stopped in the doorway when he saw me.

"Marla."

"Hello, Paul."