Page 28 of Thin Ice

He looked at me for a long moment, and he didn't push. The notch stayed turned down. I couldn't turn it back on command. It's the one thing about myself I couldn't out work.

We closed the boat down. Killed the lantern, unplugged the heater, folded the blankets, and zipped the flap. We climbed down into the cold, and it hit twice as hard after all that warmth.

The walk back up the dock was slow. Neither of us was good at endings anymore — we've had too many, we've gotten allergic. At the top, by the lot, he pulled me in and kissed me. It was a good kiss, a real one, and it didn't fix the crack, but it wasn't trying to.

"Best night I've had in weeks," he said against my temple. "I'm not being polite."

"I know you're not."

"I'll figure out Christmas. I'm going to try like hell to be at that table."

"I know." And I did know. That was never the problem. Believing him was never the problem. The problem lived somewhere, believing couldn't reach.

He got in the BMW. The engine turned over, too loud in the empty lot, and I stepped back and watched his taillights swing out toward the shore road and turn north toward the Point, toward the stone house.

I turned south. Wool blankets folded under my arm, thermoses empty, Jerry's twenties spent down to a fold of ones. I walked home along the water in the dark, and across the lake his headlights climbed the far shore and disappeared, and I went the other way, into the dark side, the honest side.

Same water. Opposite shores. Still. After everything, still.

I gave him a perfect night tonight. Every seam of it was tight. The dock, the boat, the lantern, the cocoa made specifically for him. I gave him all of it. Except for the truth about where I go all day, the coveralls in the closet, the sometimes that's really an everyday.

And he gave me all of it back. More than everything. Just no promise.

We were even.

I hated that we were even.

Chapter 8: Alex

Two days since the boat, and the house had been doing its thing.

The thing was mechanical. The housekeeper moved through the rooms on a schedule I could set my watch by. My mother walked the inlet every morning and came back pink-cheeked and cheerful about Frederick, who had apparently caught a fish on Thursday. My father's study door opened at six and closed at ten. Behind it the phone conversations continued in their low, level cadence. The folder was there doing its work from across the room, the way a grenade does its work before you pull the pin.

You don't have to pull it to know the threat is there.

Friday. Dinner at seven.

I checked my phone at 6:40, standing in front of my closet in the button-up shirt I'd already chosen.

Liam

How's the vibe over there?

Alex

Quiet. Too quiet. Western-movie quiet.

Liam

That bad?

Alex

Dinner tonight.

Liam

You got this.