The storage unit smelled of hot dust, cardboard, and the faint metal tang of the shelving. Somewhere beyond the corrugated door, gulls cried over the strip mall roof, sharp and hungry. I looked at Wade and saw not the man who had brought casseroles to my house, driven me home after blood work when Elise could not leave work, changed the battery in the smoke detector I was too weak to reach. I saw a man who had stood in my kitchen drinking coffee while knowing exactly where my husband was dying.
“What did you promise?” I asked.
Wade rubbed the place Jonah had gripped, not because Jonah had hurt him, I thought, but because he needed somewhere to put his attention. “Meryl.”
“No.” I could feel the old weakness in my legs, the ghost of treatment days when standing too long made the room narrow, but I stayed on my feet. “You don’t get to use my name like that. You don’t soften this. What did you promise him?”
