Chapter Eleven
He knows something is different. Of course, their body language hardly betrayed them before; you'd almost have thought they were strangers, not lovers. But he sees. He knows. And something is different.
He goes back and forth in his head about whether or not he should ask her about it. He stands, he sits, he reaches for the phone, he replaces it, he pours himself a drink – he doesn't put that down.
When she walks into his office at the end of the day, he's almost surprised to see her. They exchange brief words about the end of the case. She tells him she's heading home. "Alone?" slips out before he can stop it, and her face is a storm of emotions for half a second, then so blank it almost scares him.
"Yes."
He doesn't know how to respond. After half a minute of silence, she turns on her heel and walks out.
I should have said something. He bangs his fist on the table, muttering curse words to the silent room. I should have said something. But how do you speak when you don't know what to say? How can you take a lifetime of regret and hope and things you don't even really understand, and distil them all into words and sentences and coherent speech? How can you communicate with someone when you stopped speaking the same language a long, long time ago?
He didn't say anything. She's shaking when she presses the button for the elevator, she's breathing heavily when she climbs into her car, and when she pulls out onto the highway she notices her eyes are filling with tears. It's an angry hand that wipes them away. He didn't say anything. She shouldn't care.
But she does. She always has.