“A what?”
“An orgy planner,” I repeated.
“I don’t think that’s a thing.”
“Yeah, in ancient Rome. That was a real job. Orgies didn’t just happen, you know. Someone had to invite the women, organize the food, book the kithara player.”
“You are so strange,” Harrison said. And then, in the next breath: “Marry me.” It was the second time he had asked. I would have thought he was joking the first time and this one—we hadn’t been together that long and I hadn’t even told him I loved him yet—but his face was so serious, not even a hint of teasing. It sent a thrill through me.
“Maybe I will,” I said.
He jerked the wheel. I grabbed the Oh Shit handle. “Jesus, Harrison!”
The car came to a stop in the emergency lane. He stared at me, eyes wide. “Is that a yes?”
I shook my head, grinning. “No! You’re crazy.”
“Crazy for you.”
I groaned, but couldn’t help laughing. Couldn’t stop the thrill coursing through me at his words.
He leaned over, palmed my face between his hands and kissed me. My stomach fluttered; my bones turned to rubber.
Now, as I enter our dark house, I try to remember the last time he kissed me like that. Or maybe I’m trying to remember the last time I felt that way when he kissed me. And though I know that it’s only the natural progression of relationships—that it’s impossible to sustain that level of fresh excitement years in—I can’t help but wonder if Harrison’s stopped choosing me. If we stopped choosing each other.
Without turning on a light, I pad to the living room and sit on the couch, staring at nothing, waiting for my husband to come home, so I can ask him.
But he doesn’t.
* * *
In the confusion, that weird place between sleep and wake, I think the cat must be back. Every night for a week after we moved into this house, Harrison and I would hear a pitiful mewing right outside our bedroom window. But every time we’d go look—or once, offer it some milk as a peace offering in exchange for quiet—it would dart off, as if it had just been delivering a message and couldn’t stay to visit. It was like some weird welcome to our new life—a reminder that we were no longer “city folk.” That the late-night traffic and police sirens we had become immune to were suddenly replaced by wild animals—whining cats and crickets and the occasional owl—who don’t softly hoot, I’ve learned, but cackle like creepy children.
But as I start to get my bearings, I realize it’s not the cat. Was it me? Was I having a nightmare? Was I crying in my sleep? Groggy, I peer at the clock on Harrison’s nightstand, glowing 2:36 into the dark. And then I see him, perched at the end of the bed.
“Harrison?” I whisper, my voice croaky.
He doesn’t turn around and I know something’s wrong from the way he’s slumped over, not moving. I jerk aside the covers and crawl to the foot of the bed, put my hand on his back. And that’s when I notice the trembling of his shoulders. And then the wetness on his cheeks.
Harrison is crying.
I’m stunned, like I’m watching a plane fall out of the sky right in front of me. I’m not sure what to do and I just want to make it stop.
“Harrison,” I say, moving my body to sit beside him in one swift motion. This close I can smell the alcohol fumes rolling off him.
And my memory of the night comes rushing back. Harrison at the bar. With Whitney. My heart sinks to the bottom of my toes. Though I knew it looked bad, part of me thought there must be a logical explanation for it all. For why he was in a bar with another woman. Why he hadn’t told me he was going. Besides, I had been downtown with another man, too, and I hadn’t told him. Maybe that made us even. But now, he’s crying and I think maybe we’re not even. Not at all. “What is it?” I whisper, even though I’m not sure I want to know. That I don’t think I can handle hearing the words out loud.
He doesn’t respond.
“Harrison,” I repeat, and he flinches as if I’ve burned him. “Please talk to me.”
He shakes his head, but his words are muffled by his hand.
“What?”
“I killed someone,” he says. The words ring out clear and sharp into the still air. I’m momentarily stunned, my brain trying to process the difference between what I expected him to say and what he said.
“What?”
But he doesn’t respond, so I sit with the words, having lost all others.
Finally, I ask, “What do you mean?” Was he in a car wreck? Did he hit someone? My eyes rake over his body, scanning for injuries.
“I killed him,” he chokes out between sobs.
“Who?” I say, panic gripping me afresh. “Harrison, you’re scaring me.”
He just shakes his head, moaning.
“Please, Harrison.”
“I’m drunk,” he says into his hands.
“Were you in a car wreck?”
He shakes his head. Clutches his mouth with his hand, squeezing his cheeks together, then moves his fingers down his chin, smoothing the wiry hairs in his unruly beard.
“Then what happened? Who died?”
He takes a deep, quivering breath. “Noah.” And then he’s off again, deep, heaving sobs.
“Noah,” I repeat. And all at once I remember. The boy in Philadelphia. The routine appendectomy. Harrison doesn’t lose patients often—especially on the table during surgery. And it’s even more rare for him to lose a child, since most of his patients are adults. This one rattled him, I remember. It was the reason he wanted to get out of Dodge for the weekend. The reason we took that spontaneous road trip to Hope Springs.
“Harrison, that was months ago.”
He sniffs, then lets out a slow, audible breath. “It was my fault,” he says. “That he”—his voice cracks—“died.”
“What?” I say. “What do you mean?”
He blows out a long breath. “’Member Boehner?” The frat boy in scrubs. That’s how I always thought of Harrison’s colleague, a doctor a few years older than him. He was charming, but in a smarmy kind of way, and carried his stereotypical God complex like a badge of honor. I nod.
“Well, we had this ongoing . . . bet with appendectomies, who could do one the fastest. I mean, we did so many of them. All the time.” He’s slurring a little, talking low, and my mind races to understand. “Boehner was down to sixteen minutes and change and I knew I could”—he hiccups—“beat him on my next one.”