“I’ve been doing it for five years.”
The words landed like a stone in still water.
She was right.
Every dinner, every holiday, every time Daniel had put his arm around her at Chloe’s grave and called her “our girl” — she had been sitting across from the man who had destroyed her life and smiling because she had no other choice.
I had adopted her to honor Chloe.
And without knowing it, I had placed her back inside the same house as the man she was most afraid of.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
She looked up.
“I didn’t know.
But I should have — I should have asked more.
I should have seen—”
“You couldn’t have known,” Ava said.
“He’s very good at being believed.”
Daniel came home at 6:04.
He brought takeout — Thai food, my usual order.
He set it on the table and talked about a problem at work, something about a supplier and a delayed shipment.
I listened and responded and passed him the soy sauce.
Ava ate quietly.
She asked him one question about his day.
He answered it.
She nodded.
I watched his hands the entire meal.
They were steady.
Relaxed.
He refilled his water glass and made a small joke about the weather and laughed at his own joke the way he always did.
He had no idea what was sitting in my cardigan pocket.
After dinner, he settled into his chair in the living room with the television on.
I washed the dishes.
Ava dried them.
We didn’t speak.
We didn’t need to.
At nine-thirty, I said I was tired and went upstairs.
Daniel said goodnight without looking away from the screen.
I sat on the edge of the bed and took out Chloe’s note.
*I’m scared.
I love you.*
She had been scared.
She had tried to call me.
And I had been sitting at my sister’s table with a glass of wine, and I had not picked up the phone.
I folded the note carefully and placed it inside the lining of my own coat, hanging on the back of the bedroom door.
Then I heard it.
Low voices downstairs.
Daniel’s, and then Ava’s.
I moved to the top of the stairs without turning on the light.
“—just checking in,” Daniel was saying.
His voice was light.
Casual.
The voice he used when he was not being casual at all.
