Chapter Five

Adrian spent the afternoon on the sofa.

There was nowhere else to sit. The movers had taken the dining chairs, the stools from the kitchen, and the bench beneath the bedroom window. Only the sofa remained because it belonged to the house before we did.

He looked at the chandelier.

I sat on the floor beside the potted plant I had managed to keep alive through the worst year of my marriage.

"You got what you wanted," I said. "You cleared my name."

The words tasted bitter even without a tongue.

Clearing my name would have mattered when I was alive. It would have mattered before the baby, before the locked doors, before he turned every phone call with my family into a performance conducted under his stare.

Now there was no court to acquit me and no life to return to.

Adrian's eyes closed.

For several minutes, the house was silent.

Then he stood and went upstairs.

He entered the bathroom, turned on the shower, and shut the door. A moment later, he opened it again.

"Evelyn?"

My name sounded strange in his mouth.

Before he learned the truth, he only used it when he wanted my attention, and he wanted it now. During the year of revenge, he preferred thief, murderer, parasite, or nothing at all.

I stayed in the hall.

He stared at the empty space where I used to wait with his robe.

"Evelyn."

I folded my arms. "You forgot your clothes."

He couldn't hear me.

He returned to the bedroom, collected a robe, and went back inside.

An hour passed.

The bathroom door opened by itself when a draft moved through the hall. Adrian was lying in the tub with his eyes closed. For one terrible second, he looked like I had looked.

I rushed forward.

"Adrian?"

His eyes opened.

He sat up so quickly water spilled over the side.

"Who's there?"

He looked directly at the doorway, but his gaze passed through me.

In his fist was one of my hair ties, a plain blue band I had left around a bottle months ago.

He stared at it, then at the moving door.

"Evelyn?"

I stepped back.

He waited.

When nothing answered, he wrapped himself in the robe and returned to the bedroom.

Every night, I used to heat milk for him before bed. He claimed it helped him sleep. In the beginning, I burned it so badly that the kitchen smelled for two days. He drank the entire pan and kissed me with scorched sweetness on his tongue.

"Caramel," he said.

I had laughed until my chest hurt.

That night, Adrian waited past the usual time. Then he threw off the blanket, went downstairs, and heated the milk himself.

He burned it.

He carried the mug upstairs, took one swallow, and hurled it against the wall.

"Still got that temper, I see," I said.

Milk soaked into the pale carpet. The mug rolled beneath the bed.

Adrian crouched to retrieve it.

His fingers found a cardboard box instead.

I knew the box before he pulled it into the light.

"No."

I dropped beside him and tried to hold the lid closed. My hand passed through the cardboard.

"Please don't."

He opened it.

The first thing he found was a half-finished baby sweater.

It was small enough to fit over both his hands. The stitches were uneven. One sleeve was longer than the other. I had begun embroidering a blue butterfly near the collar because I still believed butterflies belonged to us.

Adrian held the sweater by the shoulders.

His mouth tightened.

He had once told me he wanted a child who had my eyes and his height. At the time, he was still pretending. I had carried those words like a promise.

He folded the sweater carefully and placed it beside him.

Under it were ticket stubs from college basketball games.

Adrian had worn number seven. He was the tallest player on the court, quick despite his size, and proud enough to make every victory look inevitable. I had attended every home game for three years.

He picked up the tickets one by one.

The dates stretched back long before Lila's death.

"Idiot," he whispered.

I couldn't tell whether he meant me or himself.

At the bottom of the box was a pink envelope.

His hands began to shake.

When I was seventeen, I had stopped him after school and tried to give him that letter. I was round-faced, spoiled, and brave for exactly thirty seconds.

He accepted the envelope, glanced at the color, and dropped it into a trash can.

Then Lila took his hand and led him away.

After they were gone, I dug through the trash can and fished the letter out.

I never tried again.

Adrian read it now.

The girl who wrote it had praised his jump shot, his grades, the way he shared his lunch with a younger student, and the ridiculous concentration on his face whenever he repaired his old bicycle. She admitted she'd been in love with him for three years and asked for one chance.

Nothing in the letter mentioned Lila, a transplant, guilt, or a borrowed heart.

The dates forced Adrian to remember our real beginning.