"Astrid."
He started yelling.
"You ruined my life.Youoweme. You're nothing without me.”The words came out in the wrong order. The order didn't matter, because the words were words I'd been hearing in a softer register from him for six years and from his mother for the entire run of the marriage.
I tried to slam the door.
He grabbed the frame. His foot wedged in the gap.
I was pushing with both hands. I'd dropped the wooden spoon somewhere on the hall floor. I was pushing against the door with everything I had, but he was stronger. His foot wasn't moving. The door was open four inches and wouldn't close. His shoulder was against the wood from the other side. He was still yelling. He was still sayingyou.
Moose was barking behind me in the kitchen.
I drew a breath. I leaned into the door harder.
His hands dropped off the frame.
I heard him stumble backward.
The pressure on the door went from his weight to nothing, and my own weight took me forward two steps into the open doorway.
Easton was on my porch in full uniform.
He had Brett by the back of the neck.
Brett was bent forward at the waist with his hands up and his face very white. Easton was holding him with one hand and not working hard at it. The smell of smoke was coming off his coat from a structure call I didn't know about. His eyes were not on me. His eyes were on Brett.
"She's not your girl anymore. She's mine."
Brett tried to talk.
Easton didn't let him.
He walked Brett off the porch. Down the steps. Down the walk. I stood in the doorway and watched the back of Easton's coat, the cuffs at his wrists, the set of his shoulders, the steadiness of a man who was not letting go. He had Brett by the neck and was walking him the way you walk a dog who has lost the privilege of walking on his own. Brett said something at the curb. Easton said something back. Brett got into a car that had been idling at the end of the block, and the car pulled away with the measured turn of a driver who'd been told not to come back.
Easton stood at the curb a moment longer.
He watched the car all the way down Maple.
Then he turned around and came back up my walk.
He stopped at the threshold and looked at me. He waited.
"Astrid." His voice was lower than I'd ever heard it.
"Easton."
"Are you hurt?"
"No."
"Did he touch you?"
"No."
He nodded once. His hand came up halfway to my face and stopped.
I tried to say something and discovered I didn't have anything to say. The shaking started at my knees and went up, the same shaking my body had done on the bank of the lake after the boy.
