"Chief."
"Hale."
"Yes, Chief."
"I'm terribly sorry to interrupt." The chief’s voice is saccharine. Sweet and sticky and not genuine.
"Yes, Chief."
"Could I possibly have a word?”
A silence.
I cannot see the Chief.
I have not seen her. I have only heard her voice. The voice is the voice of a woman who has caught someone in the act and who is being polite about the catching, and the politeness is more frightening than the catching, and I press my back against the cold metal of the truck and I keep my face down at Max's collarbone and I do not move.
"Yes, Chief."
"In the cabin or out here?”
"Out here."
Max's hand is still at my collar. She bends a count. She puts her mouth at the place under my ear, low.
"Go inside," she says. "Lock the door. I'll be in."
"Max." I’m worried for her. The chief has an aura of danger and I don’t like how the air feels with her in it.
"Go."
I go.
I walk past her on the side of the truck that the headlights do not reach. I walk to the porch with my coat closed and my hat on the dash inside the cab and my hair down. I do not look at the figure standing at the front of the headlights. I do not look at her car. I keep my eyes on the boards of the porch. I open the door. I step inside.
I close the door.
I lock it.
I stand with my back against the door in the warm of the cabin, in the smell of the cold stew on the stove, with my coat still buttoned at the top and the rest of me still loose under it, with my hand still wet, with my pulse loud in my ear, and I listen.
I hear Max's voice low at the front of the cabin.
I hear the woman's voice answer.
I do not hear words.
I slide down the door to the floor.
I sit on the floor in the warm with my back against the door I have just locked, and I put my hand flat on the boards of the floor, and I think about the woman outside who has just seen Max with her hand inside me at the side of a truck on a porch lit drive.
The woman outside is the woman Max has lied to.
The woman outside knows.
The woman outside has known. She is here because she has known. She is here because the porch light at eight o'clock at night told her the rest of what she had been guessing all week.
She knows who I am. I know it. I feel it.
