He comes to let me out around six, and I follow him across the stone path. He holds open the door to the main house like it is a restaurant and we are there to celebrate our wedding anniversary.
A bottle of red wine breathes in a glass decanter on the kitchen counter, next to a pair of raw steaks, seasoned with salt, pepper, and fresh rosemary. I rarely eat red meat, and when I was with Henry, I was a dedicated vegetarian.
“You need iron, Faye,” he says, offering me a glass of wine. “You’re so pale I barely recognized you.”
“I stopped going into the sun a long time ago.”
He has cut up some cheese and fruit to snack on while he cooks, and I make a gouda and apple sandwich.
“You look so pretty with a tan.” He turns on the gas dial, strikes a match.
“I wouldn’t look pretty at all if I still lay out.”
“You look incredible,” he says sadly, his back to me.
“Oh,” I say, uncomfortable by his easy display of sincerity. “Thank you.”
Henry uses tongs to transfer the fillets into the old copper pan, and we listen to the popping and hissing, inhale the scent of fat and char. I am hungry enough to be hungry for steak.
“Last night,” he says, checking the minute hand on his grandfather’s military trench watch, “a tree came down on a power line and the road was closed while they removed it. I wasn’t punishing you.”
“You turned the water off,” I remind him.
“I had to repair something and I guess I forgot to turn it back on. It wasn’t intentional, and nothing went out online that would put you at risk. I was actually worried about you, out here all alone. Especially since”—he brings his watch under his nose, watches it tick—“well, never mind.” He flips the steaks.
“Especially since what?”
“You’re afraid of everything.”
“There’s a pill for that. It’s called Lexapro. If you’re so worried about me, you can let me have my medication.”
“I know all about Lexapro,” Henry says curtly.
I stare at him, wondering if I heard him right. “You do?”
Henry lifts a corner of the steak with the tongs, checking the color at the edges. “Go sit down. Dinner will be ready soon.”
I make my way over to the table, double-checking that the brass hook next to the side door is still the place Henry hangs the boat keys.
Henry tents the steaks with tinfoil. He sweeps a bunch of broccolini into the same pan, tosses it in the fat and the oil, adds a squeeze of lemon. I realize I am forgetting to drink, and I take two large gulps, so that when Henry comes over it will have looked like I am relaxing and enjoying myself.
Henry cuts up our steak and vegetables on the counter, then carries over our plates. I’m allowed an adult fork. “I cooked them a minute longer than I usually would,” he says as he sits down across from me. “Bloody might be a little too much to ask of you.”
“Never,” I tell him, and our eyes catch. Weapons down. We are us again.
“How much closer are we?” I ask him. “To being done here.”
He turns his eyes down. Spears a bite of steak. “Let’s not talk about all that.”
“What do you want to talk about, then?”
Henry reaches into his pocket. For a moment I’m rigid with terror. I have something in the pocket of my fleece that I should not have, and I think maybe I dropped it and that’s what he has found. But then he removes his hand and drops two white pills on the table.
“I don’t know how much you take,” he says.
I swallow one pill and tear the other in half with my front teeth. “Fifteen.”
Henry nods. “I just went up to twenty.”