Page 24 of Wrong Mail

He says it easily, over the top of me, buttering bread. It isn't cruel. It's a small correction, the sort of thing you make when you think the decision is yours.

"Writes," I say. "I was on the phone with my editor this week."

Helen's eyebrows go up. "Were you?"

I glance at David. It's the first he's heard of it.

"Cassandra. She's got a hole in October." I keep my voice light. "I might have something for her."

"That's marvelous."

"It's early," David says. His eyes come to me, wide for half a second, a question he isn't going to ask at the table. Then he turns back to Helen. "Nothing's settled yet."

"It's Oregon," I say, and I don't know why I do it, except that I've had two and a half glasses and I'm tired of sitting in this chair being spoken for. "Old unsolved cases. Nobody's ever looked at them together."

There's a small pause at the table. Nate is looking between us with polite interest.

David's hand tightens once against the tablecloth. He doesn't look at me. He turns to Helen and smiles.

"Of course she's not driving out there," he says. "Not after the accident. Obviously."

And there it is. Delivered like reassurance. The accident. Everybody at this table knows I don't drive, and now everybody knows why. He's said it like he's protecting me.

And I say nothing because tonight is David's night. I’m not going to be the reason it goes wrong.

"Of course not," Helen says, and to be fair to her, she says it gently. "It's mostly phone work these days, isn't it? My niece does something similar."

"Something like that," I say.

"And you're sleeping better?" she asks. "David said you'd come off the pills."

"He did," I say.

I look at him. He's refilling Nate's glass.

"Mostly," I say.

David's phone rings at ten past nine.

He's mid-sentence when it happens, and I watch him do a thing I've never seen him do at a table. He turns the phone over and angles it toward himself. For less than a second nothing about him moves at all.

Then he's up, dropping his napkin on the table, apologizing to the room.

"That's the hospital," he says. "I'm sorry. Two minutes."

And he goes, not to the kitchen, not to the hall, but all the way out through the open doors onto the terrace. He keeps walking until he's standing on the grass at the edge of the lamplight, his back to the house.

Helen watches him go with an expression I can't read, and then she turns back to me and asks me something about the garden.

I answer her. I have no memory of what I say.

Because out on the lawn my husband is standing still with the phone against his ear. He isn't saying much. Every so often, he lifts his free hand, puts it on the back of his neck and leaves it there.

He's out there eleven minutes. I know because I watch the clock over the range.

When he comes back he's fine. He's better than fine, warm and rueful. He says the thing surgeons say about the hospital never letting them eat a meal in peace. Nate says something about the on-call culture, and the evening closes over it like water over a stone.

They're gone by ten-thirty.