His knuckles were clean, but his expression was different.
I didn't ask what happened and he didn't tell me.
Some doors stay closed for a reason. I've lived behind enough of them to know when one is doing its job.
The Backroads crowd is thin tonight. It’s cold and that doesn't bring people out during the middle of the week.
The temperature dropped below twenty after sundown.
Sarah is at the bar.
This is the fourth time in eight days. She used to come with Porter, sit in a booth, order wine, leave by ten. Now she comes alone, sits at the counter, orders whiskey, and stays until Tildie or I cut her off.
Tonight she's on her third double by eight o'clock.
I pour the fourth when she slides her glass toward me because cutting her off will make her leave, and right now she looks like a woman who shouldn't be driving, or walking.
Her makeup is smudged under her left eye. Not from crying tonight. From crying earlier today and reapplying without a mirror.
She's wearing Porter's flannel. The one he leaves draped over the back of their booth when they come in together.
She's swimming in it, the sleeves rolled four times, the collar smelling like a man who isn't here.
"You eating tonight?" I set a napkin beside her glass.
She shakes her head without looking up. Her thumb traces the rim, around and around, a loop with no exit.
I don't push. I stay close.
Tildie catches my eye from the other end of the bar and raises an eyebrow. I give a small shake of my head. Not yet. Let her sit.
The bar is warm, the music is low, and Sarah Boyd is dissolving in front of me one whiskey at a time.
I can't help her because I don't know what's killing her.
Except I have pieces.
I found something out. It's going to ruin everything.
The absent husband. The empty booth.
Something is breaking inside Sarah's marriage, and whatever it is, she's drowning it in Jameson because the alternative is feeling it sober.
I've watched a woman drown before. My mother.
After the divorce, before the trial, during the years when Dennis Halstead's name was still fresh enough to draw blood in casual conversation. She didn't drink—my mother's coping was cleaner than that, all locked doors, lemon cleaner, and control.
But the drowning looked the same. The hollow stare. The mechanical movements. The body operating on autopilot while the mind goes somewhere nobody can follow.
Sarah lifts her glass, sets it down without drinking and lifts it again.
"He won't even talk about it." She says it to the whiskey, not to me.
I lean my hip against the bar. "Talk about what?"
Her lips press together. For a long time she doesn't answer, and I think she's going to shut down the way she shut down last time—pick up her drink, drain it, walk out.
She doesn't walk out.