She took the gun to the foyer. She turned the key and swung open the glass door. She set the Glock in carefully, exactly as her father would have, and shut the door again, locked it.
An overactive imagination, her father had called it. The way her mind could so easily concoct the image of a gun in her hand, trained on a human being. The feel of the trigger under her finger. The kick against her palm, the calamitous sound. The heat of blood. All of it so vivid it could have been real. As vivid as a memory.
She pulled the key from the door and put it in her pocket.
* * *
She couldn’t stop it. The pressure built too fast for her to bleed it off in the thousand small ways she had developed over the years to keep things steady and agreeable. The fight was coming—not an argument, a real fight, the kind she had avoided in all the time they’d been married. And she found that she no longer wanted to stop it. Enough silence. She wanted things in the open.
It was dinner when it finally boiled over. It started with a look, Nathan watching her, his fork in his hand.
“With everything that’s happening, maybe…” He paused. “I mean, it’s not too late. To change our minds.”
“About what?” she asked, but the implication hit her before the words had fully left her mouth. She set her fork down. She hadn’t touched her dinner. She knew she should be eating more. She’d started getting faint in the middle of the day, but she could still only manage to nibble at plain bread. Now the alfredo that she’d hoped would be enticing enough that she could get down a few bites was congealing on her plate. “No.”
“You’re not being rational about this. You can’t tell me you have a good argument for keeping it. Why are you so set on having a baby right now?”
“That’s not it,” Emma said. It wasn’t something she could break into a list of pros and cons, because there was only one pro that mattered—she wanted this child, wanted this little life to kindle inside of her. She didn’t know why. She didn’t need to. “It’s not up for discussion, Nathan.”
“There’s a time limit on these things,” he said, but she didn’t answer. She thought of after the accident, after the doctor had told her that she might not be able to safely carry a pregnancy to term. The way Nathan’s face had crumpled, and for the next week he slept with his back to her, could hardly meet her eyes. But she’d healed. Better than anyone had expected. He’d been the one to cry when they got the news, pressing his face to the crook of her neck.
He let out a frustrated sigh. “I just hate having to wonder how many more secrets you’re keeping. It’s like you’ve been putting on an act the whole time we’ve been married,” he said.
“What do you want me to say?” she asked. For once, she couldn’t tell. Should she cry? Should she plead? Should she shout at him in turn? Did he want her anger, or her confession?
“I don’t know, Emma. The truth, maybe?” Nathan asked.
“I don’t even know what the truth is. If I did, I would tell you, and we could be done with this.”
“Come on. That’s bullshit,” Nathan said, slamming his palm on the table so hard she jumped. “You know plenty. You still haven’t told me what happened. Why? Are you hiding something that would make you look guilty?”
She remembered, suddenly, standing in front of her father in the study while he sat in that huge chair with its oak arms and dark upholstery, a glass of amber liquid sweating in his hand. Remembered her silence, and all her meaningless noise as she tried to explain and justify and apologize, to find the secret code, the combination of contrition and logic that would spare her the punishment she had never once managed to evade.
Nathan’s face was red, his jaw clenched. He wouldn’t hit her. He’d never hit her. He was not like her father.
But there was nothing she could say to apologize, she knew that. He would push and push and push and she would have no answer, and this precarious balance of theirs would topple at last, and it would be her fault.
She couldn’t stop it. But she could make it so that it wasn’t her fault. Not only her fault.
She looked up at him, and her lips parted to speak. His face was ruddy with anger, lines deep at the corners of his mouth. I know, she could have told him.
She stood instead. She walked to the hall, plucking her purse from its place on the credenza.
“Where are you going?” Nathan asked.
“Out,” she said. Because if she stayed, they would break. She would lose him.