She knew I was coming home tonight.
She is not here because she chose not to be here.
I stand at the counter with my hand on the edge of it and I look at the chicken and the meal is cold.
I put my hand flat on the counter beside the bread.
I count to four.
The bedroom door is open. The bedside lamp is on at low. The bed is made. The quilt is folded at the foot the way she folds it. The pillow on her side has the dent of her head in it from this morning. The closet door is open.
I walk to the dresser.
The brass dish is on the dresser the way I left it Tuesday morning when I cleared the dish for her ring. The chain is gone. The chain is gone and the ring is in the dish, and the ring is in the dish without the chain, and the ring is sitting at the bottom of the brass dish on its side at the edge of the rim with the small diamond up and the band down, and the diamond is cold in the lamplight, and there is a piece of paper folded in half under the dish.
I move the dish.
I unfold the paper.
It is one line.
I know what you did.
The pen is the pen from the side table. The paper is from the small notebook by the bed.
I know what you did.
I sit down on the edge of the bed.
I sit down on the edge of the bed with the paper in my hand and the brass dish at my elbow and the ring in the dish on its side, and I do not move for a count of four, and I do not move for another count of four after that.
She knows.
She knows.
And surely only one person could have told her.
Val.
Val came here.
Val came to my cabin and stood in my front room and told the woman I love that I killed her husband.
Val gave me ten hours of paperwork so that she could come out here alone.
The paperwork was not the punishment.
The paperwork was the alibi.
I make a sound in my chest I have not made before.
I make it once. I do not let it have a second one.
I stand up.
I walk out of the bedroom and down the stairs. The front room: quilt, book face-down, half-glass of wine. The kitchen: cold chicken, bread on the board, brass key, the note I wrote her, the lamp on at low in the window.
I turn the lamp off.
