The Tent: A Novella Read Online Free PDF Page A

at him. “But you’ve never had cause to question my loyalty. Answer me that, at least: have you?”
    “I’m not doing this right now,” she says, and turns away from him again. It punches a hot steel rod of anger through his belly and he has to struggle to resist the urge to grab her and force her back around to look at him. But he knows that’ll bring him dangerously close to a dark, forbidden place, one from which he will never be able to return.
    “You had no problem giving me a rundown of my failures, babe,” he says. “So you can at least admit to one of yours.”
    “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
    That small voice again, pleading for reason: Don’t say it. Don’t open this door. Not here, not now.
    He ignores it, taking no small measure of glee in not merely opening but kicking off the hinges a door which has long been locked to him, the contents of the room beyond a maddening mystery.
    “Wednesday nights. Where do you go?”
    And now she does turn to face him, whips down her own hood, her features twisted into a look of confusion. “What?”
    “You heard me.”
    “Are you seriously asking me this? Now?”
    “Yes. Where do you go on Wednesday nights? It’s a simple question.”
    “I go to the book club. You know that.”
    “What book club?”
    “What book…? You’re losing it, Mike. Big time. And I’m not playing this game, whatever it is.”
    “Yes you are.”
    Her eyes flash anger again, and this time despite the confidence lent him by his own resentment and certainty of betrayal, it gives him pause, tells him that perhaps his suspicions are indeed wrong. Even if they’re not, he is not sure he will ever be able to get her to admit that to him. Her constitution has always been the stronger one.
    “Let me ask you where you think I go, Mike, since you’re the one who doubts me.”
    Last chance, Mike. Last chance to keep your mouth shut and spare yourself the last shovel of grave dirt.
    But the words are too far up his throat, too tantalizing on his tongue for him to swallow them now. “That book club stopped meeting at the library eight weeks ago. I checked.”
    She hesitates, then starts to answer, and he kno ws by the ugly mask her face has become that he is not going to like whatever she has to say, but then her head whips around and she gasps, backs away from him, her arm extending to point at the rank of trees, or something between them. “Mike.”
    His anger had not been easy to generate. His whole life he has avoided confrontation because he has never been adept at it. It did in fact require his wife’s near-admission of her hatred of him for him to even know he was capable of such ire, and even then it came from fear of rejection, of abandonment, of being forced to be alone yet again. But he finds now that it drains quickly in the face of whatever it is she may have seen. And with the reminder of where they are and what they are doing, shame burns his cheeks. Jesus Christ, Mike , he thinks . Your son…
    “What is it?” he asks, and steps close, follows her gaze.
    “There,” she tells him, pointing at something between the trees, her own anger gone, replaced by fragile hope. “Do you see it?”
    For a moment he does n’t, and feels his heart sinking, but then…there it is, a soft amber glow winking at them through the phalanx of trees from somewhere in the distance. It calls to mind the light of a ship or a buoy on a dark sea.
    “Is it him?” Emma asks, though of course there is no way to know.
    “Let’s find out,” he says, and offers her his hand. She looks at it for a moment, then brings her gaze to meet his, both of their faces chalk-white in the moonlight. There is no apology in her eyes, but no anger either, only the acceptance, however temporary, of a truce for the greater good. Then she takes his hand, her skin cold, and they aim their flashlights ahead of them and plunge into the woods.
     
     

     
    In the thick of the trees, the ground begins