Page 29 of The Quiet Tenant

“I didn’t think,” you tell him. “I’m sorry.”

You reach for his arm, then take your hand back. Too volatile. The wrong contact at the wrong time, and it will be the end of you.

“Come on,” you offer instead. “Let’s go upstairs.”

He whips around. You take a step back. It only annoys him more.

“Upstairs?” he says. His voice is a furious whisper. His fingers close around your arm again. “Great idea. Just great.” You don’t understand until he raises his gaze to the ceiling: “She just went upstairs. Fucking genius.”

Cecilia. Still wide-awake in her room. This kid. You swear, she’ll be the death of you.

He shoves you back onto your chair. “Just sit down and shut up,” he tells you. “Can you do that? Can you just shut up for a second?”

You sit, tight-lipped, as he remains leaning over you for a few moments. He straightens his back and stares in the distance as he does it—you can’t see but you can feel the explosion of his boot against your calf under the kitchen table, his foot crashing into your leg. You recoil. Bite your lips, hold back a whimper. He’s not a man who kicks all that often. He squeezes and twists and pulls and does all manner of things with much more ease. Kicking, that’s a card he plays only when he can’t think of anything else. Like that time in the beginning, when he found you in the shed and knew—just by looking at you, the guilt in your eyes, the position of your body next to the door—that you had fiddled with the padlock. There was some kicking that evening. A few other times, too. When he strikes, it’s always with his feet. Never with his hands.

He heads back to the kitchen counter, his eyes fleeing from yours. There are times when he can’t look at you. Times that tell you shame still lives somewhere inside this man. Buried and smothered andignored, but shame all the same. You like to believe that it takes hold every once in a while. You like to believe that it burns him.

—

LATER, AFTER HISdaughter falls asleep, he steps into the bedroom.

The cramps are still here, but you’re not bleeding yet.

After he leaves, a new wave of pain shakes you from within. You hold on to the bed frame like a drowning person clinging to a floating piece of wood.

You bite the inside of your cheeks and taste metal.

Don’t fight it. Let the pain take over. Lose yourself in it.

You are here.

You are bleeding.

You are alive.

Once the wave subsides, an impulse from another life: You run your free hand down the back of your calves, the bruised one and the intact one. Feel the bones, unbroken. Start flexing your toes.

CHAPTER 20

Emily

On the day of the 5K, I get up at six and drive my father’s old Honda Civic to the start. Eric and Yuwanda sleep in. “I’m way too hungover to watch people run,” Eric writes on the group text. “But have fun bb girl. Say hi to the Widower for me.”

I stand in the town square. Volunteers showed up at sunrise to set up and clear the course. About a mile in, I’m told, will be the first fluid station and the Garcías’ orange slices. Around me, runners in nylon stretch, jog in place, talk about the races they’ve done and the ones they want to do. Judge Byrne goes around the crowd, greeting everyone.

I twist my fingers in the lining of my pockets to warm them up. My original plan was to set up the hot-cocoa station before the race started, but I, like Eric, had a few drinks last night, and getting out of bed that early was a physical impossibility. And now that I’m here and people are milling about, I might as well hang around and see if I can spot Aidan.

He pulls up in his white pickup truck. Unfairly beautiful, even from afar. Even with his old trapper hat and ski gloves and snow boots. He hasn’t zipped his coat all the way up, and it opens on a flannel shirt, his neck exposed. I shiver on his behalf. His kid stands close to him, bundled up in a pastel puffer jacket, white beanie, hands stuffed in her pockets. There’s a gravitas to her, something just a bit too heavy. Hard to tell if she’s shy, sad, or both. Maybe that’s just what teenage girls look like, and I’m only now noticing it. From what I remember, there was nothing easy about being a girl. Especially one who’s just lost her mother.

—

FINALLY, AROUND SEVENo’clock, Judge Byrne grabs a mic. There’s the echo of feedback, scaring birds away from the surrounding trees.People laugh as the judge struggles to turn the thing off and back on again.

“Good morning, everyone,” he says, once he’s wrestled the mic into submission. “I want to say a few words to get us started.” The crowd goes silent. “We’re here today to support a very, very special family. I take great pride in knowing that I’m part of this community. One whose members look out for one another.”

There’s a round of applause. The judge waits a few seconds to continue. “I want to thank everyone here today. Our volunteers, our spectators, and of course our runners.” More applause. Another pause until silence returns. “As you know, this race is a fundraiser. I’m so pleased to announce that, thanks to everyone’s generous donations, we’ve already raised two thousand dollars for our neighbors and friends.”

People cheer. I wince. I don’t know how Aidan reacts because I can’t bring myself to look at him. I don’t know who I was kidding, hoping that this town would help without making him feel like a charity case. That we would make this about him, not us.

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