Page 68 of Chasing the Other Woman

I unlock the side door and step into the mudroom. My boots sound too loud on the tile. Her old rain jacket still hangs on the hook beside mine, the sleeves limp.

The house smells closed up. Dust, faint lemon from the cleaner she liked, the stale ghost of coffee. No television murmuring from the living room. No Sam calling from the bedroom to ask if I can grab the towels out of the dryer. No light over the kitchen sink where she left it on.

I stand in the mudroom too long.

Then I make myself move.

The kitchen is clean. The housekeeper has a key, so I suspect she came in and swept whatever remained of the evidence of our life as it was. I'm not sure whether I should be grateful or sad about that.

I pass the living room, then stop.

There’s a framed photo on the console table. Me and Sam in front of the old blue truck, sunburned and windblown, both of us grinning like we’d just stolen something. Hershel took it after a chase that gave us terrible footage and one of the best days of my life. Sam’s arm is around my waist. Mine is hooked around her shoulders. On my wrist, bright against my tanned skin, is the bracelet.

Brown leather. Small silver clasp. Nothing fancy.

She gave it to me for my birthday not long after we started dating, back when a decent motel room felt like luxury and dinner somewhere with actual plates counted as a celebration.

I remember her sitting across from me in a booth at The Funnel Cloud, cheeks pink, trying to act like she wasn’t nervous.

“It’s not much,” she said, sliding the little box across the table.

I opened it and found the bracelet coiled inside.

She shrugged before I could say anything. “Something to keep me with you.”

I put it on right there.

I wore it through storms, meetings, interviews, truck repairs, sponsor dinners, cheap motels, our wedding reception, and the first ultrasound appointment where I stared at a grainy screen and knew my life would never be the same. I just didn't know how then.

Then the accident happened.

I climb the stairs before I can lose my nerve.

Our bedroom door is open. I reach for the light, then stop myself. The moon gives me enough to see by. The bed is made, another piece of evidence that the housekeeper has been here. Sam’s side is neat. Pillow in place. The paperback she’d been reading still on the nightstand with a receipt tucked inside as a bookmark.

The dresser drawer sticks when I pull it open. It always has. I told Sam I’d fix it. Add it to the long list of things I meant to do and didn’t.

In the back, beneath a stack of old bandanas and a watch I stopped wearing because the battery died, is a small metal tin.

My fingers go numb before I even open it.

For one second, I think about closing the drawer.

I think about driving back to Muncie. I think about leaving the tin exactly where it is, letting the drawer swallow it again.

Then Sam’s voice cuts through me.

Do we lose another two years because you don’t know how to be afraid without making me pay for it?

I take out the tin.

The bracelet is inside, coiled around itself. Clean now. I cleaned it after the hospital. Sat at the kitchen table with shaking hands and a damp cloth, wiping leather that should never have held my wife’s blood.

For months afterward, I couldn’t look at it.

I couldn’t look at my wrist without seeing Sam in the back seat of Hershel’s truck, her face gray, her fingers slipping in mine. The road slick with red mud. The scream of metal. Her hand pressed to her belly. My voice telling her to stay with me, over and over, like I could keep her here through sheer volume.

I pick up the bracelet.