Sometimes Daniel still calls out for him in his sleep, in soft sad undertones that assault her straining ears. She doesn't wake him. She doesn't wake him when he murmurs, or moans. She doesn't wake him when he reaches for her in the oppressive darkness. Not when he touches her in ways that he never does in the cold grey light of day. Not when the six letter word that spills off his slack and sleeping lips isn't her name, isn't her name at all. Sometimes she cries as he turns in his fitful sleep, sometimes she balls her fists and bite her lips until they are bloodied and sore, but she will never wake him.
Daniel doesn't know that Laurie knows. He will never tell her. His dreams betray his secrets - or are they nightmares? In both he cries out in pain. He doesn't know that she knows about everything. The hat wrapped in newspaper in his wardrobe - bloody, reeking, a beacon of past infidelities, love crimes committed before they were even together. A vial of bloody water, tucked inside a dusty cowl, a memoir of an end of an era of unspoken Eros. She will never tell him where that hat is now, five years since it disappeared. Seven since it first appeared. The vial too, long lost to a gurgling plughole. He loves her, and she knows that. He tells earnestly every day, every tired morning. He never told her he loved that damn dirty hat more, but she knows this too. Laurie knows it all, too much to sleep easy, too much to just forget. Daniel will never ever have to say a word.