with obvious skill. The letters at the center of the drawing read: Jordan McEwan. Jet gave me that drawing three months ago, shortly after we started sleeping together again. She stares at the scrap of paper without speaking, but then a choked sob escapes her throat.
“Well?” Paul says. “Nothing to say?”
She shakes her head.
“You’ve loved Marshall since middle school. He was always there between us, like a shadow in your heart. Your dream. Your secret life. I guess I hoped you’d outgrow it. But I didn’t know how deep your betrayal went.” Paul’s eyes fix on me with alarming intensity. And yet I see a sort of pity in them, too. “You came home because she summoned you. Didn’t you? Without even a word, I’ll bet. Maybe only a look, right? During one of your visits home to see your dad?”
My God, how close he’s come to the truth. I think back to the department store checkout line, Jet behind me with Kevin, her almost flirting manner. It wasn’t flirting, really, merely a possibility revealed during conversation. An admission of unhappiness in her present state, openness to a different future. An unspoken invitation. That was all it took—
“That’s her magic, man,” Paul says. “It’s effortless. She makes other women seem like girls.”
He’s right.
“I know your plan,” he says to Jet. “Wait till old Duncan died, then let Marshall go back to D.C. You’d let a little time pass, then tell me you think we need some time apart. From there, it’s on to divorce, and you try to get custody, never revealing that you were planning all along to take Kevin to Washington.”
Right again.
“Well, now Duncan’s dead,” Paul declares. “So I guess it’s time to pull the trigger. Pun intended.”
“Paul,” she pleads, “you don’t understand—”
“Shut up! I told you. Don’t speak!” He swallows like he has no saliva in his mouth. Then he yanks out a chair and sits at the table, laying his gun flat before him. I recognize the pistol: it’s a Glock 19, a compact semiauto favored by Special Forces operators. Fifteen rounds in the magazine, enough to kill us seven times over.
“The thing I couldn’t figure,” Paul goes on, “is how you thought you’d get custody. I mean, come on. Pop and his buddies own this town. Judges included. But I wasn’t taking into account what a dumbass I am. I should’ve known you had it worked out. You and your goddamned OCD brain.”
I don’t know what he’s talking about, and from the look on her face, Jet doesn’t, either. I feel like we’ve been locked into a cage with a gorilla armed with a pistol. At any moment he might pick it up and shoot us, without our ever knowing exactly why.
“You’re not getting Kevin,” he says flatly. “You know that, right? You’re not taking him from me. Ever.”
“I know that,” she says.
Paul nods forcefully. “So you’ll leave him, then? You’ll abandon Kevin? To be with Marshall?”
“No. I won’t live without Kevin.”
Paul jerks up his free hand and rakes it through his hair like a puzzled eighth grader trying to make sense of algebraic equations on a chalkboard. “The only way you get a life with Kevin is by staying with me.”
“I understand that.”
What is she doing? Trying to defuse the immediate threat by telling him she wants to stay married to him? I’m watching Jet closely for a clue as to what I should do, but she hasn’t even glanced my way.
“That prospect makes you sick, doesn’t it?” Paul says. “Living with me. Sleeping with me.”
“Paul, stop it. Just stop!” Jet sounds like a mother disciplining her child. “You and I need to go home and talk.”
“Home?” he echoes. “I figure you think of here as home now. Don’t you? This is where you get your needs tended to.”
“Paul—”
“Isn’t it?!” he cries, slamming his hand down on the table.
Jet takes her time before answering. “I suppose it has been.” She steps up to the table and lays her hands on the back of an empty chair. “Being with you doesn’t make me sick. But we didn’t get to this place by accident. And you sitting there with that gun doesn’t say much for your confidence in your position.”
“I’ve got my reason for this gun,” he says, staring fixedly at the table. “You lying whore.”
The venom in his voice sends a chill along my arms. We’re missing something, I realize. Whatever is driving this behavior, we don’t know about it. A faint buzzing starts in