Page 41 of Wrong Mail

"Was anything taken?" he asks.

Not are you hurt.

He says it to the officer, not to me, and his voice is perfectly level. It isn't the first question a husband should ask. He asked it first. I hear it, and I file it away without a word.

He realizes it right away. A second later he's on his knees in front of me, his hands on my face, saying my name, asking about the shoulder, asking about my head, doing all of it right.

But I can’t get past that he asked the other thing first.

The officer takes me through it again on the porch, notebook in hand.

“Just one more time.”

He wants to know point of entry. Time. Descriptions I can't give him. And then, near the end, without looking up from the page, he says, "Any firearms in the house?"

"No," I say, because there aren’t.

"Yes," David answers. "One."

I turn and look at my husband.

"A handgun." He says it to the officer, like it's the most ordinary thing in the world. "It's secured. I can show you it's still there, if you need that for the report."

The officer nods. David goes inside. Through the open door, I watch him enter the study and retrieve it from the low cupboard beneath the bookshelves, the doors that always stick. He comes back out with a small hard case, his initials stamped in one corner, and thumbs it open for the officer.

There it is. Black and snug in gray foam, exactly where it's apparently been the whole time.

"Still there," David says, and closes it.

He glances at me before returning it.

I don't say anything. I sit with the blanket around me and my arm strapped to my chest and consider the implications. He’s owned a gun the entire time, and I never knew.

I file it. It's what I do.

I'll take it out again later, in the dark, turn it over, and wonder what else is hidden in a cupboard I never open.

Later, while the police talk to David outside, I start to shake again. I can't stop.

It comes from nowhere. My legs go. And strangely, it's Henry who catches me. He's been at the end of my island for the best part of an hour, giving his statement. He puts his arms around me and holds me up, and I let him. I put my face against his wet shirt and I shake like something coming apart.

"You're all right," he says, into my hair. "It's over. You're all right."

When I lift my head, I see two things.

Out past the terrace doors, David has come around to where the officers are working. He's looking in at us, at Henry's arms around me, and he doesn't come in. He just watches.

Henry's face is close to mine. He's looking toward the doors, the black water beyond them, into the dark at nothing at all.

He isn't frightened. He isn't relieved. There is nothing in that face whatsoever.

He is as calm as a man waiting for a bus.

Part Two

Chapter Fourteen

The morning after, I look at the detective across the kitchen and I can't read him, which is telling in itself. Detective Rodriguez has an even expression after a night that ended with one man on a stretcher and me shaking on the porch.