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“Jake?”
“He cried when we dropped him off at school, but not before bed.”
“Did he go to sleep all right?”
“It took him a while.”
“A while” probably meant hours, because there was no such thing as an easy bedtime with Jake. He would be tired in the morning.
“Clark say anything?”
“Not a word.”
The news settled into his spine, pressing him down into the chair.
“You need to go to her.”
As if that were a thing he could just do. “You have any idea what that would cost?”
“Jamila would pay for it if you asked.”
“I’m not asking.”
“Is your pride so much more important than your marriage?”
“It’s not that.” He looked past her, through the living room of the house he’d built for his missing wife. Toward the winding staircase that led up to his boys’ rooms and his own empty bed. “I’ve got work, and I can’t leave the kids. They’re scared.”
“They’re afraid she’s not coming home.”
“They shouldn’t be.”
Janet shook her head. “Yes, they should. So should you.”
She looked right at him, challenging, and Tony dropped the reins on his temper.
“Don’t tell me what I should be afraid of. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I kno
w my daughter.”
“She’s my wife,” Tony said. “I think I know her pretty well.”
Janet pushed her chair back abruptly, its wooden legs moaning over the tile. “Then why don’t you see what’s happening? You’re losing her. She’s lost.”
“She’s in fucking Negril, Janet, not on the moon.”
“That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”
Tony stood, crossing his arms, wishing he could deny that he did. He did know it.
Amber was getting smaller. Taking up less and less space inside the house, inside herself.
It had gotten worse since the fall, when Jake started first grade. She was still there—still in the kitchen handing him his lunch when he left for work in the morning. Still in the bed, wearing her pajamas, reading a book when he crawled in next to her. She asked him how his day had gone. She told him what the kids were up to. But she wasn’t there.
Some nights he pulled into the driveway and the house was so big and so dark that he thought, I’m never going to find her. As though their home were full of water, a sinking ocean liner, and Tony had to wade through the cold weight of it, looking for his sinking, silent wife. His heart would kick into gear with a jolt of adrenaline, but then the worst part—he’d realize there was nothing he could do, because he was just sitting in the truck in the dark garage, wondering what the fuck was wrong with him.
How did you bring somebody back who wasn’t really gone?
