I jumped up, stumbling, falling, and then righting myself. Hutch sat up and glanced around the room as if looking for escape.

Then the door opened. I’d never locked it—why would I?

And my husband stood on the threshold, holding an umbrella, staring into the room as if his eyes were drinking in every detail, getting drunk on rage.

“Rusty,” I said, walking toward him.

“Well, looks like I surprised you.” He shook his umbrella and threw it into the house, where it landed on the hardwood floors, scattering rain like tears.

I turned and Hutch was standing at the dining room table. “Hello, Rusty,” he said, walking toward us now, grabbing his car keys from the side table on the way to the door. He reached out to shake Rusty’s hand, but Rusty loped past him to me.

“What the hell is going on?” Rusty asked.

“We were working,” I said, pointing to the timeline.

“At midnight? You were working?” He glanced at the timeline. “Yep, that’s it. Working.”

Hutch stepped forward to Rusty. “Yes, working. Ellie has been a huge help to me with this history center exhibit.” He turned to me. “Bye now. We’ll talk soon.” And he was gone.

Rusty stared at me and then started to laugh, a hysterical sound that made my stomach lurch. “Work?”

“Yes,” I said. “Wow, what are you doing here?”

“Is that the first thing you’d say to someone who came to surprise you? Someone who needs to see you?”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t know the right thing to say. I’m … surprised. Yes.” My legs were weak.

“You want to know why I’m here? I’ll tell you.” He threw a small blue box onto the table; it landed on top of the Summer House sketch. “I had something to tell you. You wanna hear it?”

“Of course.”

“Here is what I was going to say.” He stretched out his hands. “I don’t know a lot of things, like how to be the perfect husband or how to be the perfect dad. I don’t always know the right thing to say. Or the right thing to do. But this I do know: I’ve never wanted to live my life with anyone but you.”

I gripped the edge of the table behind me. “Oh, Rusty.”

“But that is what I was going to say. I practiced it the entire drive here, sick and missing you. But now I think I have something else to say.”

“What’s that?”

“What in the hell are you doing?”

“I don’t know what to tell you that I haven’t already told you.”

Rusty walked to the window and stared outside. “This place is beautiful, Ellie. I can see why you wouldn’t come home. I can’t give you something like this … .” His voice had the sound of the “other” Rusty.