“Goddamn it, Stratton. Why couldn’t you just trust me?”

“It wasn’t you I didn’t trust.”

Jimmy appeared in the window and cleared away some of the glass that remained. He disappeared and came back ten seconds later with a box in his arms. He held it out the window and dropped it. Some, if not all, of the dishes broke on impact.

“You guys are both fucked up,” he said again, this time from above. “You two deserve each other.”

I went to the sidewalk, picked up the box, and began walking.

“You coming?” I asked.

Carolyn shook her head again, looked down at her feet, and followed. We rounded the first corner and hailed a cab.

“I’m sorry,” I said. She didn’t respond. I grabbed her hand. “I didn’t trust him.”

“No, Stratton, you didn’t trust me.”

“Bullshit,” I said. “He’s a lowlife. I’ve seen what lowlifes can do. My father was one.”

Not a word was said the rest of the ride home. Carolyn climbed into bed and kept her back to me. I separated her jewelry from the box and then picked away the shards of porcelain from her clothes. Only one of her dishes remained intact, a white coffee mug reading JOE’S DINER on the side. I folded her clothes, placed them in a pile beside her others, and took the box out to the garbage cans.

Back upstairs Carolyn had removed her clothes and was beneath the duvet. The cat lay in her arms. It was eight. Her right ankle hung over the edge of the bed and the golden ankle bracelet with the heart charm I had bought her for Christmas sparkled beneath the light from the lamp on the nightstand. She had yet to take it off, and seeing it now made me realize that I had been wrong, plain and simple. Worse than that, I knew I had failed her.

“I’m sorry, Carolyn,” I said. “I screwed up.”

She shrugged, keeping her back to me. “It’s fine,” she said.

“No, it’s not. You’re right, I should have trusted you. But I couldn’t bear the thought of him hurting you again.”

“I know, Stratton.”

I climbed into bed with her. She kept her back to me but after a while she turned so that our faces were inches apart. She reached up and rubbed her thumb over my left eyebrow, and then my right.

“What are these scars from?” she asked.

“Fighting.”

“The scars over both your eyes are from fighting?”

“Yes.”

“From the same fight?”

“No.”

“Do you fight a lot?”

“More than I care to admit.”

“Have you ever lost any?”

I nodded. “Again, more than I care to admit.”

“Why do you fight?”

“Because I’m an angry person.”

“You don’t seem that angry to me.”

“Really?” I asked, not believing her since she’d witnessed both altercations I’d had with her ex.