“A doctor has to carry all sorts of resources, Rachel,” he said, sliding the card into his shirt pocket. “You know how forgetful the elderly can get when their families start asking questions.”
He smiled, a small, reassuring curve of his lips that had kept me steady for over twenty years. For a second, the quiet safety of our kitchen made Marcus’s words in the dark seem like a mistake.
“Of course,” I said.
He went back to his chair, and I stood by the sink, watching the reflection of the hallway light on the windowpane. The house felt larger than it had an hour ago, the corners darker.
At half past eleven, the rhythmic sound of David’s breathing came from our bedroom. I crept down the carpeted hallway toward the small room at the end of the house.
His study had always been a place of open doors and messy piles of medical journals. I reached out in the dark and touched the brass doorknob.
I turned it, but the metal did not budge.
I moved my hand lower and felt the cold, hard edge of a newly installed deadbolt. The wood around the lock felt raw, the sawdust swept away but the scent of shaved pine still lingering.
My husband had never locked a door inside our home in twenty-two years.
I stood in the dark corridor, my hand resting on the cold brass of the new lock. He had told me last month that the hinges were sticking, but this was a heavy commercial deadbolt.
I walked back to the kitchen, my bare feet silent on the linoleum.
The house was perfectly still, save for the hum of the refrigerator. I stood in the doorway of the walk-in pantry, where we kept the dry goods and the small wicker basket of household spares.
My fingers searched through the basket, moving past old curtain hooks and rusty picture nails.
Near the bottom, my fingernail caught on a small paper tag.
I pulled it up into the light of the small pantry bulb. It was a bright brass key, brand new, with a tiny paper label tied to the ring with a piece of dirty butcher’s twine.
