felt strange. Gina raised her head again. “What are you reading?”
“Your diary,” Jeremy said, without removing his eyes from the magazine. “ ‘Dear Diary, I am the luckiest woman in the world to be married to a guy who puts up with my shushing. He’s a patient man. And he looks like a male model.’ ”
She smiled. “A male model?”
“ ‘I heart him so much.’ ”
“I have never ‘hearted’ anything.”
“ ‘I just wish I could lay around with him forever.’ ”
The grass stirred. They went back to being quiet. Gina put her ear to the cavern of Jeremy’s chest, felt the twitching of his heart beneath his secondhand soccer jersey. All those organs carrying on their precious work until one day, like that, they wouldn’t.
Out of the blue, Jeremy kissed her hair and said, “Oh, all right, I heart you, too.”
•
In the late afternoon, Gina sat in the gazebo and watched shadows lean across the grass. She swirled the melted shards of ice in her vodka tonic. Drinking alone, in the daytime, wasn’t part of her usual routine, but in an hour or so, she would confront Hank, and a glass of watered-down courage might help.
What would she say to him? That she loved him, against all the odds? Play that Patsy Cline record in the background, that tune about railroad tracks and broken hearts? Some sentiments were better left in song. She poured herself another drink.
For hours, Gina waited, glancing at the mirrors for the first breath of vapor. Hank never came. She baked a tray of fudge brownies from the box, filling the air with warmth and chocolate, while her stomach remained uneasy.
Around eight, the phone rang. She snatched it up.
It was a man whose voice was higher than Hank’s, but heavy with authority. “Yeah, hi, is this Gina Tolliver?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice suddenly clogged with fear. “Yes, I’m her.”
“Are you related to Hank Tolliver?”
“He’s my husband. What is it?”
“Can you come get him, please?” He stressed the word please, as if it were the last scrap of courtesy he had left. “He’s in my son’s tree house, and he won’t come out. He scared the crap outta my kid, I don’t know how long he’s been in there. He even pulled up the rope ladder.”
“Why?”
“Heck if I know. He keeps asking if he can stay up there for a while. He’s not hurting anybody, but he won’t come down. He said his name was Hank Tolliver, and I looked him up in the white pages. The only Tolliver is you.”
“I’m his wife,” Gina said, and then repeated herself, this time, more firmly. “I’m his wife. I’m coming.”
•
The tree house was quaint, wedged between the branches of a knobby oak. Gina stood beneath it and called up to Hank. “I just want to talk,” she said.
A dejected voice emerged from within. “Is Cro Magnon Man with you?”
“His name is Mr. Adler.” She couldn’t remember his first name though Cro Magnon seemed apt, in light of his sloping forehead and the ledgelike brow over his eyes. “This is his house.”
“It used to be Helen’s house.”
“Either way, we’re trespassing. The only reason Mr. Adler hasn’t called the cops yet is because his wife feels sorry for us.”
“I feel sorry for her, too.”
“Can you at least drop the ladder? It’s just me.”
After a few moments of silence, a rope ladder wobbled down.
Gina removed her flip-flops and clambered up the rungs. She hoisted herself belly first into the tree house, only to find Hank hunched in the corner, sitting cross-legged, his elbows on his knees. He was wearing navy socks. Exposed, they made him look like a giant, graceless boy.
Gina sat in the opposite corner and waited for Hank to speak. She noticed a stack of newspapers beside him, all comics and crosswords beneath his gray felt fedora.
“This was Helen’s house,” Hank said finally, as if they’d been arguing through the silence. “Five fifteen Burnham Heights. She moved in after we separated.” He peered through the cut-out window. Mr. Adler stood at the back door, his arms crossed in a territorial fashion.
Hank sighed, then spoke in a softer voice. “She said she didn’t want anything to do with me or my money. She wanted to start over completely. So she bought this place, got a job at the library. I used to take the long way home sometimes, just to drive past her house. To see her without her seeing me.”
Gina tore a dry leaf to pieces. “So this is where