Page 73 of Wrong Mail

"He's frightened for me. That's all it is."

"That's a generous read," Henry says.

"It's the true one."

"All right."

He leaves it. The rain comes on harder, and the wipers find a rhythm at last.

The world outside the glass is reduced to two cones of light. Ahead of us, the red taillights of a car that left the club before us blur through the rain.

"Can I say something you might not like?" Henry says.

"You're going to anyway."

"Your friend, Julia," he says, watching the road. "I stood on that terrace and watched her leave on the arm of a man who put bruises on her. I haven’t been here long, but I recognize control when I see it. And I couldn’t help but think, there goes a woman who's been taught the worst thing she can do is make a scene." He pauses, just long enough for it to land. "Then I wondered, did he teach her that? And who else on this road has taught a woman that same lesson in a different way?"

“We are not the same."

"I'm not saying you are. David may never have raised a hand to you." He slows as we pass a house, his eyes glancing toward it as if something caught his attention. "But there's more than one way to teach a woman not to trust what she saw. That's all I meant. I'll shut up now."

I let him shut up and look out at the rain.

I don't say what comes up in me. He has just described my marriage back to me in a sentence and made it sound dangerous.

Somewhere on the black stretch past Julia's house, his phone lights up in the console. Whatever's on the screen moves across his face for half a second before the calm comes back.

I think nothing of it. The whole night has run like this, one strange thing after another, each of them too small to hold on to by itself.

He pulls in at my gate and the security lights come up. My house glows like a stage set behind the relentless rain.

For a moment, we sit there staring out.

"I'll walk you in," he says, opening his door.

“No, Henry. You'll drown."

"I'll walk you in, Mallory."

And he does, up the flagstones with his jacket held over the two of us. He’s close, his arm not quite around me. I key in the code he taught me. It chirps and lets us into my dark hall. Inside, the house is quiet and warm. It is just the two of us out of the storm, and I feel how easy it would be to step into a different life, his life, and never step back.

I step away from it. I turn on a light.

"Thank you," I say. "For getting me home."

"Anytime." He's already stepping back out under the eave, out of my house, giving me room. "And Mallory." He pauses on the step with the rain coming down behind him. "Whatever David says about him and Julia when he gets in, and he will come in with something, just listen to how he tells it. Not what he says. Just how." He smiles. "Goodnight."

Then he's gone, swallowed by the dark and the rain. I hear his car door close, then his tires on the gravel. I stand in the doorway and watch the taillights disappear up the road through the trees. I lock the door. I don't go up to bed.

Instead, I stay up and wait for David.

David comes in just after eleven.

I hear the car first, then the front door, then him in the hall. He hangs his wet coat and sets his keys in the dish. He moves quietly because he assumes I'm asleep. I say his name from the sofa, and he startles.

"You're still up?" he asks, turning on a lamp.

"Just dozing."