Page 104 of Wrong Mail

David still isn't home. He texted to say he'd be late.

I didn't ask late from what. I have stopped being able to ask him anything, because every answer he gives me I take apart looking for the lie inside it.

I did text him back to say Detective Rodriguez had been by and wanted him to call. David never replied.

At half past ten, the power goes out and stays out.

The dark is total for a second. Out here, surrounded by trees, dark means dark. Then lightning flashes through the windows, and the house rearranges itself into shapes. I sit still and wait for the hum of everything coming back.

It doesn't come.

I switch on my phone’s light and go to the kitchen for the candles in the drawer.

“Shit.”

There is a box of matches, a dead lighter, and a rubber band, but no candles. Then I remember the storm candles and the flashlight are out in the garage, on David's shelves.

I cross the dark hall and open the door to the garage. I’ve barely set foot in that part of the house since I stopped driving.

The garage is cold and smells of oil and cut grass. The car David bought for me sits in the middle of it, waiting for the day I decide I'm ready to drive again. I edge around it with my little beam.

I see the flashlight on the shelf where I remember it. I switch off my phone light to save the battery. When I turn the flashlight on, it throws a broad yellow beam across the garage, a mercy after the thin white glare of my phone.

I’m reaching past it for the candles when the beam catches a shape I haven’t seen on that shelf before. I might have left it alone if it hadn't looked so bulky.

I move several paint tins aside.

Behind them, pushed back to where the shelf meets the wall, there's a duffel bag.

I've never seen it before. It’s plain, dark, and zipped.

I unzip it before I can talk myself out of it.

Inside, on top of a pair of David’s hospital scrubs, is a small glass vial and a capped syringe still sealed in its wrapper. I have watched him carry things like that in and out of this house for years without once being frightened of them.

Beneath the scrubs is a roll of white medical tape.

None of it should frighten me until I reach for the notebook beneath it.

It’s ordinary and black, the kind you could buy in any shop. I open it before I can tell myself not to. The pages are filled with tight handwriting, page after page of dates, times, initials, and makes of cars. The same names run through all of it. The Ericksons. Lena Holloway. Julia.

Tucked into the back are three loose sheets. Somebody has drawn rough floor plans of three homes, marking rooms, doors, windows, staircases, kitchens, and squares I know are alarm panels.

I recognize the paper. It's the pale hospital stock David brings home in his coat and never uses up. The writing is all hard capitals and figures, tighter than anything I've seen him write at home. It looks more like a chart than anything he leaves for me on the counter.

I can’t believe what I’m seeing.

I bring up Rodriguez's number.

My thumb sits over it and won’t press down. To press it is to say the thing out loud, to hand it to someone else, to let him write it down, and to make it real.

Some cowardly part of me is still on the threshold, still telling myself there’s a version where I’ve got it wrong. One where I’ve misread the vial, the tape, the names, and my husband hasn’t been keeping this on a shelf beside the storm candles.

That’s when my phone lights up in my hand.

One word appears.

Mallory.