Page 60 of Wrong Mail

"Stop." I put my hand on the stone between us. "Stop, Julia. I'm not being part of this."

"You wouldn't be part of anything. That's the whole point of it."

"No, because his place is probably locked up like a bank," I say over her. "He works for a security company. He may well have installed the system himself. It's the one house on this road you can't just wander into."

"Is it installed, though?" She tips her head. "He told you himself he hasn't finished unpacking. Boxes in every room. If he hasn't found his kettle yet, has he gotten around to wiring his cameras? Maybe there's nothing there to catch you at all."

"Then there's nothing to find, is there?" I open my hands. "No footage either way. And whatever else that man is, he is not someone who'd let himself be caught on a system he installed. Don’t be stupid. You’d be risking everything just to see what’s inside."

She goes quiet for a second. She looks past me for a beat, then back. I assume I've got through to her, relieved that common sense is winning.

"Maybe I'd find something else," she says. "Not the alibi. Something else he doesn't want found."

“You don’t give up. There's nothing else, Julia, and you're not looking for it,” I say. "Leave it. Please."

Finally, she nods.

She lets it go so easily that the knot under my ribs loosens all at once. I'm grateful, and I don't stop to wonder how a woman who has circled one thing for a whole hour can set it down between one breath and the next. I'm just glad. We leave it there.

Chris comes in while we're not looking.

He's just there, suddenly, in the doorway to the deck, shirtless and sweating and holding a protein shake. He’s thirty-two years old and built like it's a job. The temperature of the room changes, the way it always does when Julia sees him.

Luna is up off the cool floor before I've finished turning, a low sound starting somewhere in her chest. Chris looks down at her and says, "Hey!" It’s just one syllable with a boot behind it, and she folds herself back down against the tile. It's the same thing he does to Julia, only pitched down for a dog.

"Ladies." He says it like a wink. "What are we gossiping about today?"

"Girl talk," Julia says, and her voice has gone bright, a completely different tone. I watch her become smaller in her home.

"Don't let me interrupt." He comes to the island and reaches past Julia, his hand settling on the back of her neck. The gesture is casual, almost proprietary. She goes still beneath it, and I recognize it instantly. The same way I go still under David's hand. I know that. I know it from the inside. Then he's gone again, back out to the deck, and the room breathes.

Julia doesn't turn around right away. When she does, she pulls the collar of her top straight. As the fabric shifts, I see four small marks on her shoulder, going yellow-green at the edges. Fingermarks. A few days old.

“He grabbed me,” she says. “Tuesday. It doesn’t matter why. It’s never really about the thing.” She says it lightly, and the lightness is the worst part. "It's been getting worse for a while now. The grabbing is new. I keep telling myself it's a bad patch. That he's just stressed from searching for work and it'll pass. Because that's easier than deciding it's just who he is now."

She smooths the collar down.

“He held on longer than he needed to. He looked at me the whole time and told me, calm as anything, that I remembered it wrong. That I was making it into something. And for about an hour, Mallory, I believed him. I stood in my kitchen and rearranged what happened until it felt smaller, because that was easier than admitting what it was.”

“Kick him out," I say plainly, the way a friend is supposed to. "Julia. He could be gone by this evening. You know I'd help you. You know David would."

"This, from the woman who won't look at her husband's phone." She says it gently, but we both know what it is. A way out of the harder thing.

Then her face changes.

"I know what it's like," she says, "when a man decides what happened for you. When he tells you what you saw, what you felt, what you meant." Her eyes shine, but she doesn't let anything fall. "That's why I'm frightened for you. Not because I listen to too many podcasts. Because I know the look."

I reach across the island and take her hand. For a while we just sit there, two friends in a glass house over the water, both of us with men who decide what we remember.

Julia walks me to the gate. Luna leans against her leg, and Julia crouches, takes the dog's face in both hands, and says something to her I don't hear.

"Promise me something," she says, standing.

“What?"

"Promise me you won't be alone with Henry. Not in that room, not in a car, not in your kitchen with David gone. If you want to look at his files, you bring me, or you bring David, or you meet him somewhere public. But not alone." She holds my eyes. "I can't do anything about the man in my house. Let me handle the one on our street. Promise me."

I love her. She sees people more clearly than anyone I know.