Page 45 of Wrong Mail

I thank him because he has spent his afternoon making us feel safe again. Because he was there last night when I needed someone to tell me what was real. And because I'm so tired that gratitude is all I have left.

"Thank you, Henry. Truly. I don't know what we'd have done."

Something moves in his face and is gone before I can read it.

"You’d have been fine," he says.

The crew loads the van at half past five.

Henry stays to finish the setup. The house ticks and beeps as it comes alive around us, a small green light pulsing over every door.

Luna follows him from room to room the way she did the day of the bird.

I watch him for a moment. Then I make a decision on no sleep and too many painkillers, which is how all my decisions get made now.

"Henry, would you come to dinner?" I say. "Tomorrow night. Let me feed you, at least. My way of saying thank you."

He straightens from the alarm panel slowly.

"Is David going to want me at his table?" he asks. It isn't quite a no.

"Of course. He'll be glad. You spent all day up a ladder for us."

"He'll be polite." Henry almost smiles. "There's a difference. You know it. That's why you're the one asking me, not him." He looks at me for a second. The house beeps somewhere. Luna sighs against his shin. "I'll come if it's easy. If it's easy, I'd like to. But the second it stops being easy for you with your husband, you send me home and you don't think twice. Agreed?"

"Agreed."

"Then yes." He picks up his tablet. "Thank you. I don't get asked to dinner very often."

He lets himself out through the door he spent the afternoon securing. The new alarm chirps its acceptance. Finally, I'm alone in a house suddenly full of small green eyes.

I wait a few minutes before I text David.

Asked Henry to dinner tomorrow to say thank you for today. 8ish. Ok?

The three dots come up almost at once, that little pulse that says he's there, typing. I watch them pulse. And pulse. I sit on the edge of the lounger with my phone and wait for whatever he's typing. It's taking a long time for a yes.

Then the dots stop.

Nothing comes.

I wait a full minute. The screen dims. I wake it with my thumb. There's still nothing. No yes, no no, no sure or fine or why. Just the message delivered and read and left there, my words sitting under it, cheerful and stranded.

Out on the water, a boat drags its long white line toward Seattle. The light is going gold over Yarrow Point.

The cameras on my house turn their new faces to the evening.

I sit in the middle of all that expensive safety and feel, for no reason I could name to anyone, watched.

I tell myself it's the cameras. It's only the cameras, learning the garden.

David never does reply. He walks in at half past seven that evening with wine and a look I can't read. He asks about my shoulder, the crew, and the new cameras, and he never once mentions the dinner, as if the question had never been asked at all.

Chapter Sixteen

The argument about the gun happens while I'm arranging olives, which is not where I meant to have it.

Henry is due at eight. It's ten to. David is opening the wine he brought last night, the same wine he carried in without once asking what time our guest was coming. He hasn't mentioned Henry since I texted him, and I haven't brought it up. I empty olives into a bowl because my hands need a job.