Chapter 5: Talking to the Floor

She arrived on Saturday afternoon with a duffel bag and a bottle of cheap wine.

"Honey, I'm home," she said at the front door, and she hugged me for a long time.

Her arms were exactly the right length around me.

Down the block, a gray sedan sat at the curb with Burke behind the wheel and a newspaper open on the dash.

I had told him I would text if anything went wrong, and he had told me he would be in the house in under a minute.

I had believed him.

I had believed it more than I wanted to.

The woman walked through my house slowly, touching things.

She touched the banister, the kitchen counter and the hook by the door where Carly used to hang her keys.

"You never changed the curtains," she said.

"I like them."

"I know. I picked them." She smiled at me over her shoulder.

It was true, and I kept my face still.

She knew where the second step creaked.

She knew which burner on the stove ran hot.

Every answer was right, and every one of them had come out of Carly's mouth, in Carly's own words, at some earlier time.

Somebody had listened to her for a long while.

We made dinner, and we ate it with the wine, and she did not ask for hot sauce.

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