Chapter 2 - Behind the Locked Door
I've known Ethan for almost seventeen years. I've seen him furious. I've seen him with the flu, sweating through the sheets. I've seen him drunk, terrified, and wrecked with grief at both of his parents' funerals.
I had never seen him look at an object the way he was looking at that box. Like it had spent fifteen years in the mail just to show up tonight and blow a hole in our living room.
Naturally, my imagination went straight to the worst place.
"What is this?" I said.
"Nothing."
"Nothing mailed itself to my husband during the first year of our marriage?"
"Marnie."
"Was it from a person? A woman?"
He reached for it again. I stepped back and put the couch between us.
"Who, Ethan?"
His eyes cut away from mine, quick and guilty, like a kid caught with his hand in a register. That scared me more than the box did.
"Just don't open it," he said. "Please."
I stared at him. Then I tried to make it a joke, because a joke felt safer than whatever this was.
"What, is there a secret wife folded up in here?"
He didn't smile. Not even a little.
That killed the joke where it stood.
"Ethan."
"Marnie, please."
"Then tell me why."
He pressed both palms flat against his face for a second and dragged them down. "You don't understand."
"You're right. Because you won't tell me. Fifteen years, and you're standing in our living room begging me not to touch a box."
"I'll tell you. I will."
"When?"
His eyes flicked down to the package. Just a flicker. Half a second.
That did it.
I turned and walked toward the hallway.
"Marnie, stop."
I kept moving.
"I'm serious. Don't do this."
I reached the bathroom, stepped inside, and turned the lock.
"Marnie!" His fist hit the door. "Open up."
My hands were shaking hard enough that peeling the ancient tape turned into a fight. "Tell me what's in it, then."
Silence on the other side.
I tore the box open.
"Marnie, please don't—"
Brown tissue paper. Something black underneath it.
For one stupid, sick second, I braced myself for something that belonged to another woman. A scarf. A ring. A note.
Instead I lifted out a man's dress shoe.
Black leather, slightly old-fashioned, the kind with a cap toe. Polished so carefully it still had a shine on it. A second shoe sat under the first.
Both had obviously been rebuilt at some point. The leather was creased deep across the toes from being walked in hard, and one sole looked noticeably newer than the other, like it had been replaced separately.
I sat down on the closed lid of the toilet with a shoe in each hand.
"Ethan?"
Nothing.
I unlocked the door and opened it.
He was sitting on the hallway floor with his back against the wall and his knees up. His eyes went straight to the shoes in my hands and stayed there.
"Whose are these?" I asked.
He rubbed his palms slowly back and forth across his jeans. "Mine."
"I've never seen them. Not once, in seventeen years."
"I know."
"You begged me not to open a box, and the box had your own shoes in it?"
He let out a short, bitter laugh. "Marnie."
"What happened in these shoes, Ethan?"
He looked toward our bedroom, then back at me. When he finally spoke, his voice was quiet and even.
"Those are the shoes I wore during four months of our marriage. The ones I never told you the truth about."
I stared at him. "What truth?"
He saw exactly where my mind went, and he shook his head fast. "No. God, no. Not another woman. It was never that."
"Then what are you talking about?"
He put a hand on the wall and pushed himself up. For a second I thought he was finally going to explain it, right there in the hallway.
Instead he took the shoes out of my hands and walked toward the front door.
"Get your coat."
"Ethan."
"Please. If I'm going to tell you all of this, I need to show you something first."
"After fifteen years, you suddenly need scenery?"
He looked down at the shoes hanging from his fingers. "I know how that sounds."
"It sounds worse than stupid."
May you like
"I know."
Something about the way he said it shut me up. I got my coat.
