WHAT MY HUSBAND WAS LOOKING FOR

"I don't know that it was an accident," Alexander said. "Daniel had been threatened. He told me he was afraid, and then he died before he could testify. I've never believed the timing was a coincidence. But believing something isn't the same as proving it."

"Derek said it like he knew."

"I heard him."

"Then ask him. Make him tell you."

The request came out with an anger that frightened me. Alexander didn't recoil from it.

"He could give us an answer you'd spend the rest of your life wondering about. I want an answer we can establish."

I stood, forgetting my foot until pain forced me against the sofa.

"My mother said there was an investigation."

"There was."

"She said the truck driver couldn't stop in time."

"That's what the report concluded."

"You keep saying things like that. As if everything I remember has a second version."

He stayed seated. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry. Tell me which version is real."

He had no answer, and I hated that more than I would have hated another explanation.

I turned toward the windows. Traffic moved far below us. People were going home, stopping for groceries, checking whether someone had remembered to feed a cat. Somewhere there was a woman annoyed that her husband had forgotten milk.

I wanted her life so badly it hurt.

"How old were you?" I asked.

"Twenty-four when Daniel died."

"You kept seeing him after Wisconsin?"

"When we could. He stayed at the company. He thought leaving would draw more attention to the records he'd copied."

"And you came back."

"Eventually."

I turned. "Now you run it."

"Some of it."

"The company?"

"And things your father would have wanted me to stay away from."

It was the first answer that made him seem less like a safe room and more like the man people had whispered about downstairs.

"Did he know?"

"We argued about it."

"What did he say?"

Alexander rubbed his thumb along the edge of his watch. "That I wasn't obliged to become my father just because I couldn't escape his name."

I could hear Dad saying it, gently at first and then firmly if the other person tried to joke.

"Did you listen?"

"Not enough."

I sat again. The photograph lay on the table between the water glass and the uneaten bread.

"Derek asked about Dad when we started dating. I thought it meant he wanted to know me."

Alexander's attention sharpened, but he didn't interrupt.

"He wanted to see photographs. Letters. He asked whether my father kept account books at home. I said I didn't know."

I remembered Derek sitting on my mother's sofa, smiling while she brought out a shoebox. He had listened to her stories. He had washed the mugs afterward.

My mother told me he seemed thoughtful.

"After she died, he said the house upset me too much. He offered to clear it out. I was grateful."

"What happened to the papers?"

"He said some were damp. He took them away to dry them, and later he said they were ruined."

I stared at my hands.

"I got angry. He said I was blaming him because I couldn't accept she'd died. Then I apologized."

Alexander's jaw tightened.

"There was a watch," I continued. "Silver. Brown leather strap. Dad had my initials engraved on the back."

He went still.

"E.W.?"

"Yes."

"Do you have it?"

"Derek took it after our wedding. He said he'd get it repaired. When I asked for it back, he said the shop had lost it."

"Which shop?"

"He never told me."

For the first time, the excuses arranged themselves into a pattern I could see. Missing letters. A lost watch. Drawers moved when I wasn't home.

"He was looking for something," I said.

"It's possible."

"Not just tonight. For years."

Alexander leaned forward. "Daniel hid records. I don't know where. I knew he sometimes used that watch to keep small things when he didn't want his pockets searched. A folded number, an address."

"Derek had it for three years."

"That doesn't mean he found what he wanted."

I wanted to ask why, but I was suddenly too tired to hold another question.

Alexander noticed. "We can stop."

"If I stop thinking about it, it won't go away."

"No. But you can rest and think about it tomorrow."

I looked at the torn dress. "I don't have anything to wear."

"There are clothes in the bag Marco brought. If they don't fit, we'll find something else."

He handed me the photograph when I stood.

"May I keep this tonight?"

"Yes."

Upstairs, the guest suite smelled of clean linen. I checked the bathroom, the closet, and the space behind the curtains before I could help myself.

Alexander waited in the doorway.

"There's a lock on the inside," he said.

"Who has a key?"

"Security has emergency access. Nobody will enter unless you ask, except if there's an immediate danger."

I touched the lock. It wasn't the same as the one at home. Nobody needed to stand outside to turn it.

"Could someone stay in the hallway?"

"Yes."

"But not come in."

"Not come in."

After he left, I turned the lock twice, testing it. I put the photograph on the bedside table and changed into loose cotton clothes.

I slept for twenty minutes. Then a trolley rolled somewhere beyond the door, and I woke with my hands over my face.

For a moment I was back in our bedroom, listening for Derek's key.

I went to the bathroom and turned on every light.

The woman in the mirror had dried mascara beneath her eyes. Her wrist was bruised. Without the green dress, she looked less like the wife Derek presented at dinners and more like someone I had once known.

I washed my face. The water ran gray, then clear.

"I'm not going back," I whispered.

I waited for the panic that always followed such thoughts.

It came. My stomach clenched. I imagined Derek arriving at my mother's funeral with flowers, kissing my forehead, telling everyone he would take care of me.

I imagined the watch disappearing into his pocket.

Then I looked toward the locked door and said it again.

"I'm not going back."

This time I reached for a towel instead of an excuse.