“Mommy’s worried,” Victory says softly into my neck. “Don’t be worried.” She tightens her tiny arms around me, and I squeeze.
“Not worried, darling,” I say, feeling a tingle of guilt. “Just tired.”
I’m sure she doesn’t believe me. You can’t fool children, you know. You shouldn’t even bother trying; they just grow up doubting themselves.
“Did you call Gray?” says Vivian, her brow creased. She smells like lemon verbena. She puts a hand on my arm and rubs gently.
I offer her what I hope is a dismissive, self-deprecating smile. “No need.”
She looks at me skeptically but says nothing more, just places a kiss on my cheek, one on Victory’s, then squeezes us both with her expansive arms. As I pull away down the drive, I see Drew watching me from the upstairs window.
That afternoon while Victory is down for her nap, I sit on the lanai, looking out onto our own view of the ocean, and start to think about all the ways that I can die.
Gray is late coming home, and Victory is already sound asleep upstairs in her room. I am sitting on a leather sofa I didn’t choose and don’t actually like, watching the high, dancing flames in our fireplace as he walks through the front door. For a second he is just a long shadow in the foyer; he could be anyone. But then he steps into the light and he is my husband, looking strained and tired. He doesn’t know I’m watching him. When he sees me, though, he smiles and looks a little less world-weary.
“Hey,” I say, getting up and going to him.
“Hey.” His embrace is powerful and I sink into it, hold on to him tightly. There is no softness to him; the muscles on his body are hard and defined. In this place I am moored. The churning of my day comes to calm.
“Want a drink?” I ask as I shift away from him. He holds me for a second longer, tries to catch my eyes, then lets me go.
“What are you having?” he wants to know.
“Vodka on the rocks.”
“Sounds about right.”
I walk over to the bar that in the daylight looks out onto our back deck. At night all I can see is my reflection in the glass doors as I fill a square lowball with ice and pour cold vodka from the freezer. This is another feature I didn’t choose about our house, a wet bar stocked with liquor we rarely touch. There is so much about this place, a ridiculously extravagant wedding gift from my father-in-law, furnished and decorated by Vivian, that has nothing to do with me—or Gray. It is hard to ever be grateful enough for such a gift and impossible to complain about the various features that don’t appeal. Sometimes I feel like we live in a model home, everything shiny and perfect but just slightly off from what we would have chosen ourselves.
I walk back over to him, hand him his drink, and we sit together. I put my legs up on his lap, take my waiting glass from the table. The ice has melted, the vodka gone watery and tepid. I drink it anyway, too lazy to make myself another.
I have one of the glass doors open, and the unseasonably cold salt air drifts in, warmed by the fire. I see him glance over at it. I know he’s thinking that the door should be closed and locked, but he doesn’t say anything. I notice the deep crescent of a scar between his right eye and his temple. I realize that I barely see his scars anymore. In the beginning they made me wary of him, made him seem hard and distant. I wondered what kind of violence could leave so many marks on a man. But I know the answer now. And I know his heart.
“It’s happening again,” I say after a minute of us just sitting there staring at the flames. Somehow the words seem melodramatic even before I add, “Worse than it’s ever been.”
He barely reacts, but I see a muscle clench in his jaw beneath the shadow of black stubble. He stares at the fire, closes and opens his eyes slowly, and takes a breath. We’ve been here before.
He puts a hand on my arm, turns his eyes to mine. I can’t see their color in the dim light, but they’re steel gray, have been since the day he was born, hence his name.