Page 112 of Wrong Mail

"He said it was you." I’m looking up at Henry and the words come out slow. "David. He kept saying it was you. That you set all of it up."

I watch the accusation land. He doesn't argue. He doesn't rush to defend himself. He only looks tired, older than he is, sad even. He nods a little, as if it is the answer he expected and prayed he wouldn't hear.

"Of course he did," Henry says. Quiet. "He needed you looking at me. As long as you were frightened of the man next door, you weren't frightened of the man in your bed." He says it gently, and then he lets it lie.

He doesn't press it. He turns away from it, back to the room and the chaos of it, as though David's last accusation is a small sad thing already behind us.

"Mallory. Listen to me. We don't have long." He takes my face in both his hands and makes me hold his eyes. "When the police come through that door, they are going to see a dead man and his wife alive beside him, with his blood on the floor and her head bleeding. They are going to test everything in this room. The gun. Your hands. Your clothes. They are not going to start with what happened. They are going to start with what they can prove."

"But you're the one who shot him," I say.

"I am. And I'll tell them so. I'll tell Rodriguez. I'll tell anyone you want." He doesn't look away from me. "But not to the first patrol officer who walks in cold, in the dark, when Julia can't speak and you were unconscious on the floor when I found you. That officer won't know the case. Won't know David. Won't know what's been happening here. The room can tell them a gun was fired. It can't tell them why, or what happened while you were unconscious."

"I didn't do anything."

"I know that." His voice softens. "But you can't tell them what happened after you hit your head. Julia can't tell them anything right now. Do you see? There is no one in this house who can back me up. No one who can tell them I fired because he was going to kill us.”

I feel the case settling around me. A hole where tonight should be. A friend who can't speak.

“I need to help Julia,” I say.

He looks toward the black mouth of the wing.

"I already tried to call for help. The landline isn't working. I couldn't get a signal out, not in this storm, not from here." He shows me his phone. He’s right. There’s no signal. His thumb moves once against my cheek. "Mallory, no ambulance is coming until someone reaches a working line. So we drive until the phone catches, and we send them straight back to her."

“No, we take her with us."

"We can't." He says it before I've finished. "I don't know what he gave her. I don't know how much. She’s in no state to move. If we move her wrong, if we fold her into a car and she stops breathing halfway down the road, there's nothing I can do for her. How would that look? She needs an ambulance. She needs people who know how to keep her alive."

Some part of me thinks we could get her to those people, faster than any ambulance could. But the thought is already sliding away, out through the crack in my skull, and in its place is the picture he has put there for me. Julia's head lolling in the back seat, her breath disappearing under the rain and the engine, no one hearing the moment her breathing stops.

I can't hold both thoughts at once.

So I hold the one he gives me.

Under all of it, small and out of reach, there is still a splinter I can't get my hand around. Something is too clean. Too set. Some part of me knows the feel of a room that has been arranged. But my husband is dead a foot away, my skull feels full of broken glass, and the man holding me up is the only thing in the room that feels like help.

I can't turn the splinter into anything else.

So I let it go.

Henry gets an arm around my back and lifts. The room slides, then holds still. We begin moving. Out of the study. Into the hall. Toward the black mouth of the wing where Julia is.

I stop. "I'm not leaving her, Henry. I can't leave her in there."

"You're not leaving her." His voice is low at my ear, and he moves me forward the whole time. "The best thing we can do for Julia is get a signal and send help."

We are almost past the wing when I remember.

"My phone."

Henry stops. "What?"

"My phone. It was knocked out of my hand."

His eyes move to the plastic, then back to me. "Where is it?”

"In there. With Julia."