Peril

TONY

He sat behind the wheel and stared at the house, the unlighted windows, the motionless curtains, the Explorer that rested in the otherwise vacant driveway, everything just as Eddie had described it after he’d gotten back to the marina.

She was gone. The pain of her leaving turned instantly to a wild, inchoate anger, so that he flew out of the car and strode across the lawn and bolted into the house as if carried on a boiling wave.

Once inside, he slammed through the first floor, checking each room, then stormed up to the second floor, where he did the same. In the bedroom he made no move to retrieve his clothes from the floor, his attention focused instead on the unmade bed, the way she’d left the sheets rumpled, the blanket sagging toward the floor.

A stinging heat assailed him, and in a single explosive charge he slammed his fist into the wall. The sting of the impact felt good, and so he hit the wall again and again and again, until he’d pounded a gaping hole into the plaster and bits of shattered debris lay scattered like small white bones at his feet.

When it was over, he slumped down on the plush blue carpet. In his mind he saw Sara as she’d appeared the night he’d met her, a slender young woman with shoulder-length hair who’d come on tough and worldly but had melted at his touch. He felt the sweetness of her unexpected surrender, the way she’d given herself up to him, the fever and the shuddering and the low moan, the way she’d whispered “I love you” that first time. To hear her say that again, just once, was all he wanted now.