I didn’t know what to say to that.
He turned his coffee cup around on the table. Once. Twice.
“Can I ask you something?” he said.
“Sure.”
“Do you trust him? Michael?”
The question hung there in the quiet kitchen. The refrigerator hummed. Somewhere in the house, a
clock ticked.
I opened my mouth to say of course. The words were right there. I’d said them a hundred times, to friends, to my mother, to myself.
They didn’t come out.
“I used to,” I said finally. “I don’t know anymore.”
Tom nodded slowly. He looked at me for a long moment. His eyes behind his glasses were tired
and sad and something else. Something careful. Like a man walking across ice, testing each step.
“Get some sleep, Jenna,” he said gently. “Tomorrow’s going to be a long day.”
I went back upstairs. I lay down next to my sleeping husband.
I didn’t know it then. But Tom had already been sitting at that kitchen table, every night, for three weeks. Waiting.
The next day, I did my best to put it all out of my mind.
It was a beautiful October Saturday. Sunny and cool, the kind of day where the air smells like apples and leaves. The rest of the family started arriving around noon. My parents came first, with
