Five:The night before

SUSAN 

We didn't go to bed.

Not really. We went through the motions — locked the doors, checked the windows twice, pulled the blinds. Noah did a full walk of the apartment with a flashlight, opening closets, checking rooms we hadn't used in weeks. I stood in the hallway and watched him and said nothing.

Then we sat on the living room floor.

Backs against the couch. Blankets over our legs. The television off. The only light came from the kitchen — that soft glow from the stove hood, the one we never turned off.

The kitchen still smelled like smoke.

"Say it," Noah said.

I looked at him. "Say what?"

"Whatever you've been chewing on since Henri pointed at that thing."

I pulled my knees up. Wrapped my arms around them.

"The police," I said. "We should call them."

"Yeah."

I waited.

He didn't move.

"Noah."

"I heard you."

"Then why aren't you reaching for your phone?"

He leaned his head back against the couch. Stared up at the ceiling. His jaw worked — that same muscle, that same tick. I was starting to hate that muscle.

"Because I've done this before," he said.

"Done what?"

"Called them."

The room went very still.

I didn't ask. I just waited. That's a thing I'd learned about him early on — Noah didn't answer questions. He answered silence. Ask him something directly and you got a wall. Sit with him and say nothing and eventually the door opened.

It took almost a full minute.

"Joana," he said.

The name hit me in the chest.

"Twice," he said. "First time, she put her hands on me. I called them. Filed a report. They took my statement, took pictures, asked me what I said to provoke her." He laughed. Short. Ugly. "Second time, she showed up at my office. Broke a window. Security restrained her until they got there. She told them I attacked her."

"And they believed her."

"They wrote it down. Both versions. Filed it. Nobody did anything."

He finally looked at me.

"That's what they do, Susan. They write it down. They file it. Then they go home and you're still here."

I didn't know what to say.

I'd known about Joana. Sort of. The shape of her, not the details — an ex, a bad one, someone he didn't talk about. Every time I'd pushed, he'd gone quiet in that way he does, and I'd let it drop, because I loved him and I didn't want to make him say it.

I wished, right then, that I'd made him say it.

"Then what do we do?" I asked.

"Tomorrow," he said. "I've got a guy. Not police — private. He's handled things for the firm before. If I call him tonight, he'll tell me to sit tight and not touch anything."

"So we sit tight."

"We sit tight."

He reached over and pulled me against him. I went. I always went.

His hand found my hair. My cheek. My chin. He tilted my face up and looked at me for a long moment — long enough that I felt my stomach drop, because there was something behind his eyes that I couldn't name.

"You'd tell me," he said.

"What?"

"If someone called you. If someone said something to you." His thumb brushed my jaw. "You'd tell me."

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

"Noah—"

"I'm not asking," he said. "I'm telling you. If it happens again, you tell me."

If it happens again.

He knew. He didn't know what — but he knew something, and he was letting me keep it, and that was worse. That was so much worse than if he'd just called me a liar and made me say it out loud.

"Okay," I whispered.

He kissed my forehead.

We sat there until the sky went gray.

---

SUSAN 

The call to his guy happened at seven.

I heard half of it from the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the mattress with my phone in my hands.

The screen was dark. But I didn't need it lit to know what was on it.

Unknown.

Three more. All between eleven and midnight. All from nights Noah had been away.

They'd been coming for weeks. I'd watched them ring, one after another, and I'd let every single one go to voicemail.

No. Not voicemail. I'd declined them. Every time. Because something in my gut told me not to pick up.

And this morning, I finally did.

I sat there with that thought for a long time. The phone heavy in my hands. My thumb hovering over the call history, over that list of unknowns, over everything I should have told him last night and didn't.

Noah's footsteps came down the hall.

I locked the screen. Put the phone face-down on the bed. Smiled at him like nothing had happened.

His guy was coming at ten.

And at ten, everything changed.

---

To be continued…